Dehorning cattle is practised to reduce injury to other animals and handlers, but causes significant pain — and polled genetics offer a route to eliminating the need entirely.
Dehorning is one of the most painful routine procedures in cattle farming. Without anaesthesia, it causes acute agony followed by weeks of wound healing with potential chronic pain. The procedure is performed primarily to protect other animals and handlers, but the welfare cost to the dehorned animal is significant. Pain relief at dehorning — lidocaine plus an NSAID — reduces but does not eliminate suffering. The long-term solution is selection for polled genetics, which eliminates the need for dehorning entirely. Several major dairy and beef breeds now have polled variants with equivalent production performance.