Van der Saag Dominique, White Peter, Ingram Lachlan, Manning Jaime, Windsor Peter, Thomson Peter, Lomax Sabrina
Sydney school of veterinary science, Faculty of Science, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia.
School of life and environmental sciences, Faculty of Science, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia.
Animals (Basel). 2018 Feb 28;8(3):35. doi: 10.3390/ani8030035.
The use of pain relief during castration and dehorning of calves on commercial beef operations can be limited by constraints associated with the delivery of analgesic agents. As topical anaesthetic (TA) and buccal meloxicam (MEL) are now available in Australia, offering practical analgesic treatments for concurrent castration and dehorning of beef calves, a study was conducted to determine their efficacy in providing pain relief when applied separately or in combination. Weaner calves were randomly allocated to; (1) no castration and dehorning/positive control (CONP); (2) castration and dehorning/negative control (CONN); (3) castration and dehorning with buccal meloxicam (BM); (4) castration and dehorning with topical anaesthetic (TA); and (5) castration and dehorning with buccal meloxicam and topical anaesthetic (BMTA). Weight gain, paddock utilisation, lying activity and individual behaviours following treatment were measured. CONP and BMTA calves had significantly greater weight gain than CONN calves ( < 0.001). CONN calves spent less time lying compared to BMTA calves on all days ( < 0.001). All dehorned and castrated calves spent more time walking ( = 0.024) and less time eating ( < 0.001) compared to CONP calves. There was a trend for CONP calves to spend the most time standing and CONN calves to spend the least time standing ( = 0.059). There were also trends for the frequency of head turns to be lowest in CONP and BMTA calves ( = 0.098) and tail flicks to be highest in CONN and BM calves ( = 0.061). The findings of this study suggest that TA and MEL can potentially improve welfare and production of calves following surgical castration and amputation dehorning.
在商业肉牛养殖场中，给犊牛去势和去角时使用止痛措施可能会受到与镇痛剂给药相关的限制。由于澳大利亚目前已有局部麻醉剂（TA）和口服美洛昔康（MEL），可为肉牛犊同时去势和去角提供切实可行的镇痛治疗方法，因此开展了一项研究，以确定它们单独使用或联合使用时提供疼痛缓解的效果。断奶犊牛被随机分配到：（1）不去势不去角/阳性对照（CONP）；（2）去势去角/阴性对照（CONN）；（3）口服美洛昔康去势去角（BM）；（4）局部麻醉剂去势去角（TA）；以及（5）口服美洛昔康和局部麻醉剂去势去角（BMTA）。测量了处理后犊牛的体重增加、牧场利用率、躺卧活动和个体行为。CONP和BMTA组犊牛的体重增加显著高于CONN组犊牛（<0.001）。在所有天数中，CONN组犊牛的躺卧时间均少于BMTA组犊牛（<0.001）。与CONP组犊牛相比，所有去角和去势的犊牛行走时间更长（=0.024），进食时间更短（<0.001）。CONP组犊牛站立时间最长，CONN组犊牛站立时间最短，存在这一趋势（=0.059）。CONP和BMTA组犊牛转头频率最低（=0.098），CONN和BM组犊牛甩尾频率最高（=0.061），也存在这一趋势。本研究结果表明，TA和MEL可能会改善犊牛手术去势和截肢去角后的福利和生产性能。
