Pain management to improve ruminant farm welfare

• Autores: Peter Andrew Windsor, M. A. Lomax, K.P. White
• Localización: Xl Congreso Nacional de la Sociedad Española de Ovinotecnia y Caprinotecnia (SEOC) XVL Congreso Internacional / coord. por María Jesús Alcalde Aldea, Martín Rodríguez García, 2015, ISBN 978-84-9048-398-5, págs. 26-34
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Research on provision of farmer-applied pain management to improvethe welfare of livestock during aversive husbandry interventionscommenced following development of a spray-on topical anaesthetic(TA) formulation containing lignocaine and bupivicaine (Tri-Solfen®;Bayer Animal Health, Pymble, NSW) originally developed for themulesing operation in Australia. In mulesing, breech skin is removedto create a ‹bare area› and TA applied peri-operatively, considerablyimproving welfare for >24hrs. TA has been adopted enthusiastically with>40 million Merinos now having received pain management, with manyflocks continuing mulesing to reduce life-time risk of blowfly strike until‘wrinkle’ phenotypes are removed genetically. We then investigated TAfor surgical castration, tail-docking, disbudding, dehorning, ear-taggingand shearing wounds and concluded that practical pain managementduring surgical interventions should commence with inhibition ofnociception as TA is far more efficacious than previously considered.Potentially, pre-operative cryo-anaesthesia in some procedures (eg eartagging & notching) may be a less expensive alternative to TA’s. Formulti-modal pain management, ameliorating wound sensitisation bythe use of nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAID’s) is availableand may have a particular role when cautery is used (eg tail dockingand disbudding). Finally, modifying cognition by centrally-acting drugssuch as low dose xylazine, is possible. Tri-Solfen® use by farmers hasimproved welfare attitudes on many farms and has potential applicationfor global livestock industries.