Dehorning and disbudding are among the most painful routine procedures in cattle management, yet pain relief provision remains inconsistent across the industry.
Disbudding and dehorning without adequate anaesthesia causes acute and prolonged pain that is well-documented in the scientific literature. Despite this, surveys consistently show that a significant proportion of procedures are performed without local anaesthetic or post-procedural analgesics. The pain of disbudding without anaesthesia causes cortisol elevation that persists for hours and behavioural indicators of pain including head shaking and reduced feeding that last for days. Polled genetics offer a permanent solution that eliminates the procedure entirely, and the expansion of polled genetics in dairy and beef breeding represents the highest-welfare long-term option.