Dehorning and disbudding of cattle is one of the most common painful procedures in livestock farming, performed to reduce injury risk but causing significant suffering without adequate pain relief.
Dehorning and disbudding are performed for management convenience and safety, but they cause genuine pain and distress. Calves show pain behaviours during and after disbudding that persist for hours. Dehorning of older animals causes even more acute trauma. The availability of effective local anaesthetics and sedation makes analgesia straightforward, yet uptake has been slow without legal mandates. Breeding for polled genetics represents the most welfare-friendly long-term solution, eliminating the need for the procedure entirely. Welfare-conscious producers are increasingly adopting polled breeding lines as they become commercially available.