Burdizzo Escapades

As mentioned in an earlier post, when we tried to castrate the young billies with bands they were too big for their balls to fit in the tiny little rubber bands. Mission aborted, we went back inside and ordered a burdizzo. The burdizzo looks like a pair of horizontal pliers. When you clamp it closed it crushes the spermatic cord and cuts off blood flow to the testicles.


Thus - no blood and no infection. I think I prefer this method because we can wait a little longer to castrate and avoid to some degree the urinary calculus problems that castrated goats (called wethers, by the way) can have.

The way we did it was that I held the young goat on my lap with his back against my chest and his head up by my head. I grabbed his back legs and pulled them upward, leaving his balls dangling down for Craig to clamp. Maddy held their horns so I wouldn't get stabbed in the neck. (yay, Maddy!) Craig would give us a three count so that we would be prepared for the kicking and screaming, then he'd clamp the burdizzo shut and count to five before releasing it. On to the other testicle.

On the very first goat, Craig gave us the 1...2...3... count, but then couldn't clamp the instrument shut out of sympathy. "I cahn't, I cahn't! Not while he's looking at me!" Craig said. :) Maddy and I told him to buck up (pun intended) and get on with it.

So.. 1..2..3... clamp! Oh, my.. that goat screamed with its tongue hanging out and kicked. I had to hold on with all my might until he realized that kicking hurt more than not kicking and calmed down. Repeat on the other testicle and release him. He was then fine and walked daintily away. Another reason that I like the burdizzo over the elastrator bands.

All went well until the final goat. Realize that while we were doing the six billy goats the remaining unclamped goats were watching in dismay from the catch pen. When we got to the last goat, got him up in my lap and Craig started the countdown, the little guy knew that something huge was going to happen at the end of the count. He started counting along with Craig. 1..baaa...2...baaa. This totally broke Craig's stride: "I can't do it if he's going to count with me!" Maddy scritched his face and whispered sweet nothings and the goat calmed a bit. He still counted along, but it seems Maddy's soothing words calmed Craig some too.

I've heard that one of the problems with the burdizzo method is that sometimes the cord doesn't get all the way clamped and you end up with the goat still being fertile. We watched carefully to make sure that all balls were shrinking as they should.

FreezerBoy's balls swelled a bit, which worried me. A close watch was kept on him but it only took a couple of days for the swelling to go down.

It will be weeks before the testicles finally shrink to nothingness, and the boys will get to keep their scrotum as a momento of manliness. In the meantime, they're staying as far away from us as they can get!