Recognizing pain in farm animals is a critical welfare skill that many stockpersons lack, leading to widespread under-treatment of painful conditions.
The ability to recognize pain is a foundational welfare competency that is unevenly distributed in farm animal care. Animals cannot report pain verbally, and stoicism in prey species can mask significant suffering. Validated assessment tools — grimace scales, behavior-based indicators, gait scoring — provide objective frameworks for pain detection, but their adoption in practice requires training, time, and institutional commitment. Inadequate pain management is particularly common following surgical procedures like castration, dehorning, and ear notching, all of which cause acute pain that could be managed with available analgesics.