Pain control for castration and tail docking

Posted in: Ontario Pork, Pork Insight Articles by admin on August 26, 2013

A study was performed to determine if the pain killer, meloxicam could be used to minimize the pain associated with processing piglets (castration and tail-docking). Both male and female piglets were given an injection of meloxicam or a placebo at least 30 minutes prior to processing. Mortality and growth rate were monitored and treatment was found to have no effect on these parameters. Castrated piglets receiving meloxicam displayed significantly less tail-jamming behaviour and tended to exhibit less isolating behaviour compared to piglets receiving the placebo. These behaviour results suggest meloxicam did reduce pain.  A second piglet study was performed to evaluate a different pain killer, ketoprofen. Results were similar to the meloxicam study, with no difference in growth rate and mortality between pigs receiving a pain killer and those pigs receiving the placebo, but behaviour and cortisol levels suggested a positive reduction in pain during the first few hours after castration. Another study evaluated the use of a local anesthetic (lidocaine) injected into the testicle to reduce the pain associated with castration.  The local anesthetic helped block the acute pain caused by severing the spermatic cord and removing the testicle, and the combination lidocaine and meloxicam helped reduce behavioural changes up to 24 hours after castration. Our conclusion from this work is that an analgesic given at the time of handling for processing is practical and not a significant economic burden, but the combination of local and analgesic is questionable both from a welfare and a labour standpoint.

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