Pain Assessment in Cattle

Introduction 

The 21st century consumer is wealthier but also more detached from production agriculture than any in history. Therefore, animal welfare concerns are becoming an important issue to our clients and customers. We recognize that pain is an inevitable consequence of many routine animal husbandry procedures in farm animals. However, how can we assess if cattle are in pain and if our analgesic interventions are working? In this session we will examine novel approaches to measuring pain and analgesic drug efficacy in cattle. We will discuss a practical sub-anesthetic/ analgesic drug combination you can use to take the edge off the fractious cases you encounter.

Nociception is an inevitable consequence of many routine management procedures in farm animals. Castration is considered one of the most stressful experiences for livestock by the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) 1 and is performed on approximately 15 million calves in the U.S. annually. Dehorning and castration are especially significant in terms of animal welfare because preemptive analgesia can be applied in advance of the painful stimulus, thereby preventing sensitization of the nervous system to subsequent stimuli that could amplify pain. The AVMA “supports the use of procedures that reduce or eliminate the pain of dehorning and castrating of cattle” 3 and proposes that “available methods of minimizing pain and stress include application of local anesthesia and the administration of analgesics.”1 In spite of this, a recent survey of 184 bovine veterinarians conducted by our research group found that only one in five U.S. veterinarians use anesthesia or analgesics at the time of castration. One reason for this discrepancy is the lack of objective methodology to quantify the most effective pain mitigation strategies. [...]