Dehorning and disbudding of cattle causes significant acute and chronic pain but can be made substantially more welfare-compatible through appropriate timing, analgesia and breeding for polled animals.
Dehorning is performed on the majority of dairy cattle in the UK to prevent injury between animals and handlers — a genuine safety and welfare rationale. However, the procedure itself causes significant pain that can be substantially reduced by appropriate analgesia. The gold-standard approach is to breed polled cattle that never develop horns, eliminating the need for any procedure. This requires investment in polled genetics but has been shown to be economically viable. In the interim, universal adoption of local anesthetic and systemic analgesia for all dehorning and disbudding would significantly reduce a pervasive welfare harm in the dairy sector.