Polling

Polling is the act of removing horns and the ability to grow horns from an animal while it is very young. This is generally done in three ways;

1)Polling bands (very small rubber bands) are placed on the nub of the horn and inhibit horn growth, this method is not very successful as the animal will often rub the band off.

2) An electric polling wand has a heating element (similar to a car cigarette lighter) that burns the incipient horn out of the animals skull and the resulting scar tissue keeps the horns from growing back.

3) A caustic chemical solution is used to burn the horns out similar to a polling wand.

As you can guess the animal in question does not enjoy any of these methods, imagine what having a section of your skull burned off would feel like. But the main reason most people poll their animals is that in order to "show" your animals in competition, they must be polled. The secondary reason is that people think that horns make the animal more dangerous.

Rosie and I do not poll our animals, frankly I can not see any legitimate reason to poll an animal on our homestead. We have one goat who's prior owners tried to poll her with a caustic chemical and failed, as they would not be able to she show her due to this failure she was sold to us at a discount. Little Lucy AKA Unigoat is our little pure bred toggenburg female and she is the only goat on our homestead that was polled. Due to the failed polling Lucy has one stunted but straight horn and one small horn cap, about 1" long. From time to time Lucy manages to snap off this horn cap leaving an open bleeding wound on her skull that has a direct line into her sinus cavity. Recently Lucy once again snapped off this cap and bled all over the place, so far we have been lucky and she has not gotten the open wound infected but we try and keep a close eye on her while she has that injury. A failed polling will haunt an animal for the rest of its life, causing reoccurring injury and associated pain.

So why am I talking about this? Well we have a fundamental belief on our homestead that our animals should be able to live in an environment as close to the one they evolved into as we are able to provide. Our chickens run around cage free, our pigs live on pasture and our goats and sheep don't get their skulls burned open at birth. Call us crazy, but we believe that animals are pretty smart and if you let them live like they are meant to live they will be healthy. Goats use their horns for two reasons;

1) Defense
2) Temperature regulation

Goats use the vascular structure of their horns to keep their temp from fluctuating in the weather and without their horns you need to be watchful of weather extremes that could make your goats sick. Goats (and their ancestors) have been developing horns for millions (sic) of years, there is probably a pretty good reason they needed to keep that evolutionary trait. Granted that not all ruminants have horns there are some naturally polled animals and while I am not a specialist in the anatomy of herbivores I would be willing to guess that naturally polled animals have other forms of temperature regulation not found in horn-growing breeds.

Some people claim that goats with horns are too dangerous and polling is meant to keep people safe. To that I would say "What are you doing to your goats that makes them want to gore you to death?" I move among our 500-700 lbs pigs with no fear, I push apart our rams and male goats with out getting hurt, I feed our roosters and ganders by hand, this is not magic. If you raise your animals to be friendly by treating them well and showing them respect and affection then you will not need to worry about them trampling you, biting you or goring you to death on a daily basis. Really, it works, try it.

The moral of all this?

If you animals are born with a trait normal to that breed there is probably a reason and you should let them be normal. To do otherwise is cruel and flies in the face of millions of years of experience and no matter how good you are I am guessing you don't have millions of years of experience.