The welfare significance of the castration of cattle: a review

Abstract

Castration is an ancient husbandry procedure used to produce docile cattle for draught work, to reduce unwanted breeding, and to modify carcass quality. All the physical methods used to castrate cattle have side-effects and cause pain. The plasma cortisol response to castration using Burdizzo clamps and, by inference, the acute pain experienced, is less than that caused by surgical, rubber-ring or latex-band castration. The cortisol response may be influenced by the age of the animal castrated, but this has not been well defined. Local anaesthesia virtually eliminates the cortisol response, and thus the acute pain, caused by rubber-ring or latex-band castration, but needs to be combined with a systemic analgesic such as the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug ketoprofen to eliminate the cortisol response to Burdizzo or surgical castration. When used alone, ketoprofen sometimes reduces the cortisol response to Burdizzo or surgical castration but may need to be accompanied by local anaesthesia to eliminate the pain-induced behaviour seen during the castration process itself. Thus, pharmacological methods are available to virtually eliminate the acute pain experienced by calves during the 12 h following castration. The use of these methods is an additional cost for farmers and may be limited by the availability of drugs for farmers to use and the scarcity of veterinarians in farm animal practice.