Welfare assessments of analgesic options in female lambs for surgical mulesing and its alternatives

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 study assessed the efficacy of the analgesic agents Buccalgesic and TriSolfen, singly or in combination, in reducing the pain response of Merino lambs subjected to mulesing. The best outcome was seen where Tri-Solfen and Buccalgesic were used in combination, delivering the benefits of both local anaesthetic and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory agents.