Dehorning of cattle is performed for safety and management reasons but causes significant acute and post-operative pain that requires adequate analgesia to meet welfare obligations.
Dehorning causes significant acute pain and post-operative discomfort. Without adequate analgesia, disbudded calves show pain behaviors including head shaking, ear flicking, and reduced play for days after the procedure. Pain significantly worse than with analgesia has been documented by behavioral and cortisol studies. Post-procedural pain lasts 12-24 hours even with local anesthetic blocks without additional analgesia. Adult dehorning causes severe acute pain from severing of horn tissue that contains nerves and blood vessels. The preventable nature of dehorning through selective breeding for polled genetics makes this an avoidable welfare impact with a long-term solution available.