Dehorning is performed on millions of cattle annually to reduce injury risks in intensive farming. The procedure causes significant pain and requires appropriate analgesia for welfare-acceptable practice.
Dehorning and disbudding are among the most common and welfare-significant painful procedures performed on farm animals. Despite being legal and widely practised, they cause acute and prolonged pain that is frequently inadequately managed. The evidence base for effective analgesia is strong: local anaesthetic blocks acute pain, and NSAIDs such as meloxicam reduce post-procedural inflammation and pain for 24 to 72 hours. Both are inexpensive relative to the welfare benefit they provide. The most progressive welfare approach is to breed polled genetics to eliminate the need for the procedure entirely. Several major breeding programmes are successfully introducing polled traits into high-producing dairy and beef breeds. Regulatory pressure and consumer-facing welfare commitments from major processors are driving improvements in analgesia practices across the industry.