Dehorning and disbudding of cattle are among the most common and painful routine procedures in livestock farming, with effective pain management available but inconsistently applied.
Dehorning welfare is fundamentally about pain management and the availability of alternatives. The procedure is performed to prevent injury to other animals and humans from horn contact, but it causes significant pain that persists for hours to days without analgesia. Local anaesthesia eliminates the acute procedural pain; NSAIDs address the post-procedural inflammatory pain. Both are available and cost-effective. The longer-term solution is widespread adoption of polled genetics, which produce hornless cattle without any procedure. Rapid genetic progress in polled dairy cattle means this alternative is increasingly practical.