Sheep routinely undergo painful procedures including mulesing, castration, and tail docking without adequate pain relief.
Sheep pain management represents one of the largest gaps between available welfare improvement and actual practice. Effective, inexpensive analgesics are available. The procedures causing pain are widely practiced. Yet uptake of pain relief is inconsistent at best and rare at worst. This reflects normalization of sheep pain rather than genuine practical constraint. Regulatory requirements would drive rapid improvement.