Dehorning causes significant pain in cattle that is substantially reduced through local anaesthesia and NSAID analgesia, yet is still commonly performed without pain relief.
Dehorning without analgesia causes measurable and significant acute pain. Behavioural and physiological responses including vocalisation, head shaking, and cortisol elevation confirm the pain intensity. Post-procedural pain without NSAID treatment persists for many hours. The combination of local anaesthetic block plus systemic NSAID is now the recommended minimum standard but is still not universally applied. Polled breeding offers a long-term welfare solution eliminating dehorning entirely. Welfare improvement through mandatory pain relief and transition to polled genetics represents an achievable near-term advance.