Promoting welfare solutions for Australian Merinos

Surgical mulesing is a painful husbandry procedure, carried out to minimise the risk of breech flystrike throughout life of a sheep. The welfare benefits in terms of breech strike reduction are well documented, but in recent years there has been much discussion about the impact of the procedure itself on the individual animal and increasing pressure on the wool industry to end the practice of mulesing. This project investigated the effects of mulesing wound size and animal age on the welfare of sheep undergoing the mulesing procedure. In addition, it explored a new model to provide objective measures of pain utilising conscious Electroencephalogram (EEG) measurements in sheep and lambs.