Sheep Pain Recognition and Management

Sheep are stoic prey animals that mask pain, making reliable recognition tools and proactive pain management essential for welfare-conscious shepherding.

Key Facts

The Sheep Pain Facial Action Unit (SPFAU) provides validated facial coding for sheep pain assessment.
Lameness — a major welfare problem — affects 5-10% of sheep in typical UK flocks.
Footrot, foot scald, and CODD (contagious ovine digital dermatitis) cause severe foot pain in sheep.
Sheep with unrecognised and untreated pain show reduced feed intake, altered social behaviour, and weight loss.
NSAIDs are underused in sheep management despite their effectiveness and low cost.

Welfare Considerations

Sheep welfare improvement requires breaking through the cultural assumption that sheep do not feel pain intensely. Scientific evidence clearly demonstrates that sheep experience pain from lameness, castration, and other common conditions, and that they mask it through evolutionary prey animal behaviour. Validated pain assessment tools including the SPFAU enable more reliable pain recognition. Integrating NSAIDs into routine management of painful conditions significantly improves welfare across millions of sheep annually. Stockperson training in pain recognition and treatment is a high-impact welfare intervention.

What You Can Do

Learn to recognise sheep pain using validated behavioural and facial assessment tools.
Use NSAIDs routinely for all painful procedures including castration, tail docking, and footrot treatment.
Monitor lameness prevalence monthly using locomotion scoring and address above 2% prevalence.
Treat foot conditions promptly — delayed treatment significantly worsens pain and prognosis.
Advocate for pain management to be included in sheep farming assurance scheme requirements.