Cattle dehorning is a painful procedure routinely performed without adequate analgesia, causing unnecessary suffering that effective pain management can largely prevent.
Cattle dehorning causes significant acute pain that persists for days after the procedure. The pain is well-documented and effective analgesia is available but rarely used due to cost and time. Requiring pain management for dehorning is standard in Europe and increasingly mandatory in welfare certification programs. Polled genetics offer the long-term solution of eliminating the need for dehorning.