Do Pool Noodles Actually Work on Goats? How to Cover Horns

Let’s go back to 2018 when I searched for my first goats to bring to the homestead. I’m still in awe that I’m living my dream out in the country and sharing my home with my kids and a baby mini pig at this point. We had 25 chickens, a dog, barn cats, and kittens, but goats were the next must-have animal.

Why did I want goats? Because they were cute and that was the only reason. Did I ever think about milking them? Not really.

I was looking through Craigslist because Facebook groups weren’t that popular at the time for animal hoarding, and I saw the cutest black-and-white goats. They were mixed Nigerian Dwarf and Fainting. I saw a doe and a wether for $300.

I was sold. This was the most money I had spent on animals, but I was ready.

I knew nothing about horns. Once I brought them home, I decided to do research, and we all know that this is not the smartest approach.

At that point, it was probably too late to disbud them, so we kept the horns. They were fine until they turned two.

I loved these two goats so much, Oreo and Willow, and it’s kind of heartbreaking to write this because I ended up selling them because of the horn situation. So when I tell you I tried everything, I did, and then that was the next best choice for everyone on the farm.

I eventually added more goats to join Willow. I ended up buying a Registered Nigerian Dwarf doe who was disbudded. We now disbud all our goat kids and keep no horns on the farm.

Willow and Oreo never hurt any of us with their horns. Willow was the dominant goat, and that’s common when she is the only one with horns. During their pregnancies the hormones got wild.

She ended up ramming one of my younger does in the butt and cutting the poor girl, and it swelled up so badly. I wasn’t even sure if that doe would be able to kid. She did, and it took a good year for it to heal completely.

After the first couple of years, the horns really get long.

For the most part, she was okay until the last few months of her pregnancy, when she became such a brat to the other goats. Then we added the sheep, and although her horns would get caught in the wool, it was still obnoxious.

No one ever wanted to even sleep with her. We had two stalls in the barn, and she would get one entire stall to herself.

Then she started ramming the gutters and ramming the barn. The beautiful barn that my husband built. I would be sitting at my computer working and just hear this banging over and over again,

I’d yell out WILLOW. She’d stop for five minutes and continue again.

So I tried the pool noodles. We used duck tape and electrical tape around them. I swear, when she got her noodles on, she was proud.

It only took a couple of hours for her to get them off. The horns would constantly poke through, which was still okay for her banging her head against the barn.

Then I tried the tennis balls. You cut a slit in them to put on top of the horns. Some others online said to glue it, but I didn’t want to do that to her.

I think that using tennis balls and pool noodles will work on younger goats with smaller horns. Once they are three and older, the horns are much longer and thicker.

They didn’t stay on for more than 20 minutes. The noodles were a better fix. For us, she was constantly banging the barn apart more than the other animals. She didn’t care with the tennis balls on. She immediately banged the barn, dug those things into the dirt, and got them right off.

The look she gave me was like, “Are you serious? Nothing can stop me.”

Yep, she left those tennis balls in the dust.

Then, my husband brought home some Armaflex from work. I was really excited about this because I thought it would hold up better. And it did! She would wear this for a whole day. Then I decided that I would just put it on her daily.

Another thing that worked with her banging her head against everything in the barn was spraying water at her face with a plastic water sprayer. Goats hate water like that. It got to a point where I would bring the spray bottle out, and she’d run out of the barn.

I still use the water bottle when letting the animals loose in the yard. When they try to eat the apple trees, I hold up the spray bottle, and they run away. Try it; it does work great. It only takes a couple of times before they realize how much they hate the spray bottle.

I even went to my Facebook page to see what others suggested. Everyone said the same thing I had already tried.

After a week of being put on Armaflex, Willow got really upset and broke the door inside the barn. The sheep hated her, and with the sheep and goats, I didn’t have enough space in the barn for Queen Willow to be by herself, so I had to make the tough decision to sell her.

Willow was an excellent mother and a great milker, too, and her good qualities led to her being sold. She was able to go to a homestead with her two doelings, and they will use her for milk.

If you are starting out with goats, go all horns or no horns. Willow’s brother Oreo was not in the barn much, as they have a little pen out in their pasture, but he was starting to bang the fence constantly with his horns. I ended up selling him, too, because I wanted to sell the buck he was a buddy of mine.

So, do pool noodles work? They can, but they aren’t a long-term fix. Lesson learned: Do all the research before bringing any animals home. Decide if you want to go all horns or no horns.