Pain recognition in cattle is essential for prompt treatment of injury and disease. Understanding cattle pain expression and validated assessment tools improves welfare outcomes across the industry.
Pain in cattle causes suffering that reduces feed intake, immune function and reproductive performance while increasing disease susceptibility. The stoic nature of cattle, evolved as prey animals, means that pain behaviour is suppressed until pain intensity is very high. By the time overt pain signs are visible, significant suffering has typically already occurred. Pain scoring using validated tools enables more systematic and objective assessment that captures mild to moderate pain that would otherwise be missed. Treatment with NSAIDs that provide multi-day analgesia is more effective for welfare than opioids alone due to the inflammatory component of most cattle pain. Routine analgesia for known painful procedures including dehorning, castration and difficult calvings is the baseline standard.