Sheep are prey animals that conceal signs of pain, making welfare assessment challenging. The Sheep Pain Facial Action Coding System (SPFACS) is transforming how we identify suffering in sheep.
Improving sheep pain recognition requires changes at multiple levels: developing validated assessment tools, training farm workers, and establishing protocols that assume painful conditions require treatment. The SPFACS grimace scale provides a standardized, validated way to assess pain without requiring individual animal familiarity. Training programs that teach farm workers to use grimace scales and behavioral pain indicators have shown success in improving treatment rates and reducing the duration of untreated painful conditions. At the policy level, mandatory analgesia for surgical procedures (castration, tail docking, disbudding) is increasingly required in high-welfare jurisdictions. Pain monitoring programs embedded in flock health planning would systematically address chronic lameness and other welfare-limiting conditions that persist due to poor detection.