Dehorning and disbudding are routinely performed in dairy and beef cattle to reduce injury risk. The acute and chronic pain caused by these procedures is now well documented and pain relief protocols are increasingly required.
Dehorning and disbudding welfare has improved significantly as evidence of procedure pain became impossible to ignore. Local anaesthetic and NSAID use are now recommended by veterinary bodies and increasingly required by assurance schemes. However, compliance is not universal - surveys show that a significant minority of producers perform disbudding without adequate pain relief. The long-term solution is polled genetics that eliminate the need for the procedure entirely. Polled cattle produce the same milk and meat as horned cattle; their adoption is limited primarily by producer inertia and the slow pace of genetic change, not technical barriers.