Dehorning of cattle — removing or preventing horn growth — is practiced on most dairy and beef farms to reduce injury risk. Without analgesia, it causes significant pain. Evidence-based pain management and polled breeding are the welfare solutions.
Cattle dehorning without adequate pain management is a pervasive and preventable source of welfare harm in dairy and beef farming. Research has clearly established that disbudding causes acute pain (evidenced by cortisol spikes, pain behaviours, and altered brain activity) and prolonged post-procedural pain lasting at least 24 hours. The evidence for effective analgesia is equally clear: combination of a local nerve block with NSAID administration addresses both acute and post-procedural pain components. Despite this evidence, implementation of adequate analgesia during disbudding remains inconsistent globally — particularly in markets without regulatory requirements. The long-term solution is breeding polled cattle: commercially viable polled genetics exist in many breeds, and transitioning to polled herds eliminates disbudding entirely. This transition takes time but has been demonstrated at scale in some dairy systems and is progressing in beef breeds. Both better analgesia now and polled breeding as a structural solution deserve simultaneous investment.