Quote Originally Posted by jackhoying View Post
I helped Dad do this many times as a kid, 50 or more years ago. This type of de-horner was actually much more humane than the other version Dad used, which would dig deeper into the base of the horn. Dad did always pour on a concoction of some sort on the wound. Mom definitely had lots of blood to clean out of our clothes after a session of 40 steers!
This was about equal in crudeness to when we helped Dad castrate young male pigs/hogs. Us boys would kneel on the pig and hold the one back leg forward and Dad did his magic with a sharp pocketknife. Sometimes the hogs were bigger and we'd get one heck of a workout!
At the blacksmith shop I worked at as a kid we made a dehorn tool similar to that except instead of having a V knife ours was semi elliptical and rotated in like that of a quality cigar nip. It required very little effort to close since the blade rotated and was a lot less stressful on both the animal and the user.
William would often demonstrate it by slicing through a 2" diameter tree limb.