Cattle are stoic prey animals that mask pain effectively, making reliable pain recognition tools essential for welfare management in beef and dairy systems.
Recognising pain in cattle is one of the most important skills in livestock farming, yet it is often poorly developed. Cattle evolved as prey animals, meaning natural selection has favoured behavioural masking of pain and injury - an individual that shows weakness is more likely to attract predation. This evolutionary legacy creates a welfare problem on farms: cattle can experience significant chronic pain from lameness, mastitis, or injury without displaying obvious distress signals until the condition is severe. Validated pain assessment tools - Grimace Scales, lameness scoring systems, and behavioural observation protocols - give stockpeople and vets objective ways to identify pain at earlier stages. Routine implementation of these tools, combined with prompt pain relief, would substantially reduce the burden of chronic pain in cattle.