Recognising and treating pain in cattle is essential for their welfare. Lameness, calving injuries, and disease can cause chronic suffering that is often underdiagnosed on farms.
Cattle experience acute and chronic pain from a wide range of conditions including lameness, mastitis, injury, and routine husbandry procedures such as dehorning and castration. Because cattle are prey species that evolved to conceal weakness, their pain is frequently underestimated by stockpersons. Research shows that untreated lameness causes prolonged suffering and can persist for months. Effective pain management using NSAIDs and local anaesthetics is available but often not used due to cost, habit, or lack of awareness. Training farmers to use validated pain assessment tools such as the Cattle Pain Face Scale improves outcomes. Legislative requirements for analgesia during painful procedures are expanding in some countries but remain inconsistent globally.