Great Dane ear cropping information

Originally, Dane's ears were cropped to prevent ripping and tearing when confronting wild boar during a hunt. The practice of ear cropping remains today and is purely a cosmetic surgery.

Cropped Great Dane

You may have purchased a new Great Dane puppy whose ears are already cropped. Perhaps you are considering this procedure for a puppy with unaltered ears. In any case, the decision to crop is one of personal preference.

Please remember, you are making a commitment to care for and tape your dog's ears for six months to even a year!

Many Great Danes can be found in rescues with botched ears. This is primarily due to their past owners failure with required taping, cleaning, and general care of the ears after surgery.

Natural Great Dane

Basics of the surgery

The average price for a Great Dane ear cropping is about $250-$350 dollars if performed by a Veterinarian. Cost will vary per your geographic location. We've learned of the procedure costing as little as $75-dollars when performed by a breeder! Be careful, don't make such a critical decision based on a few hundred bucks.

Ears are typically cropped between 7 and 10 weeks of age, if your Great Dane is older than 12 weeks, it's almost too late. Finding a Vet to perform the crop at this age will be very difficult!

General anesthesia is used to sedate the pup allowing the surgeon to remove over 1/2 of the dog's ear. The ears are either taped-up with medical dressing, or held in place with foam and glue after the surgery. In about 8 to 10-days, the stitches are removed. The Vet will now tape your dog's ears rigidly, in an upright position.

You will now be responsible to clean, tape, and re-tape your Dane's ears for about 6 months on average. If you can't commit to caring for your Dane's ears, we recommend to leave them natural. Improper care and taping could ruin a magnificent Dane leaving it with floppy, bent, twisted and disfigured ears.

Your Vet will do the first taping right after the stitches come out. It's a good idea to have the next couple tapings performed by your Vet also. This will assure that the Great Dane ear cropping is healing properly without infection or complication.

Perfect, now that your pup's ears are healing you can maintain the crop and tape the dog's ears yourself, they will soon be standing proudly.

There are a many different taping methods used for Great Dane ear cropping, such as the tampon/post method, and dog ear taping with pipe foam. We have published how-to articles on each. Links to the articles are back at the Dane Resource page.

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