A pilot trial and an experiment were carried out to investigate the effectiveness of providing analgesia for docking lambs’ tails in reducing discomfort behaviour. In the pilot trial, an elastrator ring was applied to the restrained lamb’s tail and the lamb was given either an oral dose of aspirin dissolved in water or an oral dose of water prior to release. The posture of the lambs given aspirin changed between sternal recumbency and standing less frequently than the posture of lambs given just water. This effect was significant from 10 to 20 minutes post-treatment. In the experiment, the lambs were given one of two docking treatments (application of the elastrator plus aspirin dissolved in water or application of the elastrator plus water) or one of two control treatments (restraint plus aspirin dissolved in water or restraint plus water). Three quarters of the postures used to assess discomfort changed for docked lambs within the hour after tail docking, and marked changes in the postures over time were also observed. Postures and activities were considered ‘normal’ or ‘abnormal’ (typical of docked lambs). The mean frequency of abnormal postures was 3.5 % for control lambs and 22.6 % for docked lambs. The mean frequency of abnormal activities was 5.2 % for control lambs and 19.3 % for docked lambs. Two of the activities seen in docked lambs were similar to those seen in control lambs when aspirin had been given. However, provision of aspirin was associated with increased levels of some activities\/postures. These effects were minor compared with the effects of docking, and there was no indication of effective analgesia. Behavioural effects indicative of pain were observed immediately and did not subside fully within one hour when elastrator tail docking rings were applied. Even though there appeared to be an analgesic effect of aspirin in the pilot trial, further experimentation did not substantiate this effect.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A pilot trial and an experiment were carried out to investigate the effectiveness of providing analgesia for docking lambs’ tails in reducing discomfort behaviour. In the pilot trial, an elastrator ring was applied to the restrained lamb’s tail and the lamb was given either an oral dose of aspirin dissolved in water or an oral […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[928],"tags":[2982,8882,23389,13816,19216,9290,20007,10858,14784,3465,22808,16262,12671,2120,20912,20911,1518,25562,4874,26223,52,20757,69],"class_list":["post-5108","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-welfare","tag-activityageanalgesiabehaviourlambpainpain-assessmentrestraintsheeptail-docking","tag-al","tag-analgesia","tag-ass","tag-assess","tag-carr","tag-gh","tag-mark","tag-ness","tag-pea","tag-pic","tag-pl","tag-provis","tag-release","tag-some","tag-t","tag-tail-docking","tag-tail-docking-analgesics","tag-tan","tag-the-effects","tag-treatment","tag-vision","tag-water"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5108","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5108"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5108\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5108"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5108"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/prairieswine.com\/rsc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5108"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}