18/01/2026
This image gets shared a lot. And every time it does, people are understandably upset, because the caption says this calf is about to be killed with a bolt gun. Babies. Cruel humans. And people believe it. That’s the awful part.
But that caption is completely false.
What’s actually happening here is a routine husbandry procedure called disbudding. The metal “cage” isn’t an ex*****on device, it’s a calf crush, designed to safely and gently hold a calf still so nothing goes wrong. On many farms (including ours), a vet sedates the calf beforehand. If that isn't possible, then a calf crush like in the photo is often used. A local nerve block is then administered, exactly like the one a doctor gives you for procedures that don’t need a full anaesthetic. The calf cannot feel pain.
The “gun-shaped” thing people panic about is not a bolt gun. It’s a hot iron used to remove the horn bud before it ever attaches to the skull. Because the nerve block is in place, the calf feels nothing at all. Once the job is done, calves are given long-acting pain relief so there’s no aching afterwards, and they go straight back to normal life, feeding, lying down, being calves.
Why do we disbud at all? Because horns are dangerous. To the cow that grows them. To other cows. And to the farmer working with them every single day. Farmers are actively breeding towards polled cattle, animals that are genetically hornless, so disbudding isn’t needed. You see more and more of them every year. But genetics take time, and you don’t just “switch horns off” overnight. Until then, disbudding is done in the most humane, controlled and welfare-focused way possible.
Images like this are powerful, but they’re also misleading. If doctors shared out of context photos of some human medical procedures, they’d look horrifying too. Things are not always what they look like, and captions don’t make them true.
This kind of misinformation is what leads people to make decisions, or judge farmers as cruel, based on something that simply isn’t accurate. Whatever choices you make, dietary or otherwise, please make them fully informed ones. Because the reality on farms is very different to what viral images suggest.
