Despite clear evidence that sheep experience significant pain from common husbandry procedures, analgesic use remains inconsistently applied across the sheep industry worldwide.
The sheep industry has been slower than the cattle or pig sectors to adopt routine pain management, partly due to the stoic pain concealment behaviour of sheep, which historically led to underestimation of their pain experience. Research using cortisol assays, behavioural scoring, and facial action coding has demonstrated clearly that lambs undergoing castration and tail docking experience significant acute pain, and that untreated lameness causes prolonged chronic pain. Barriers to analgesic adoption include cost, time, and veterinary prescription requirements in some countries. However, controlled studies show that providing meloxicam at castration reduces behavioural pain indicators substantially and does not significantly affect production economics. The gap between what is known and what is practised remains a major welfare issue in the sheep industry.