cbcfarms said:
when we were getting our steer dehorned the vet commented on that. we didn't ask but he mentioned people saying that they would like him to angle the poll. we only had scurs so it turned out nicely but i guess i have heard of the head shaping.
with naile coming up, what about surgeries to keep teeth in? i'm new to this one and someone told me they used oragel the morning of weigh in and got away with it. i also hear about screwing them in from the lower part of the jaw.
We used to have the tooth rule in Texas. My senior year I have a very good steer that was contender at our majors (placed second behind the grand at Fort Worth and wound up third at Houston). He spit his teeth before Houston. We knew he was going to and actually pulled them so we had them. Removed the permanents coming in (worst thing I've ever done to a calf) and glued the babies back in the morning we left for Houston with denture cement. Put a little feed in his mouth right before sift and breezed right on through.
After that little experience, a vet in OK came up with a procedure to keep the permanents from coming in. He got rich from Texans running our babies up to him to get the permanent teeth buds (I'm sure that's not the correct term) drilled out. He'd go in from the bottom of the jaw and do something that would prevent the permanent teeth from ever coming in.
Illegal? There weren't any rules that said we couldn't. Rules just said the baby teeth had to be in. That is what was done literally by nearly everyone that was serious about showing back in the day. Shortly after that vet figured out how to get around that problem, all Texas shows did away with the tooth rules.
I didn't realize any shows still had tooth rules. I understand the intent, but that really penalizes kids for something that is not under their control. Certain breeds loose teeth much earlier than others (i.e. Angus).
There's nothing about cosmetic dehorning that's unethical. We've always had heads shaped.