Behavioral and Physiological Response to Routine Thermal Disbudding in Dairy Calves Treated with Transdermal Flunixin Meglumine

Abstract

Transdermal flunixin meglumine was approved in 2018 to treat pain related to foot-rot in cattle, leading to the question of whether it would be effective as part of a comprehensive pain management strategy for disbudding. To investigate, calves were assigned to three treatment groups: 2% lidocaine cornual nerve block only (L), lidocaine nerve block +0.45 mg/lb (1 mg/kg) oral meloxicam (M), or lidocaine nerve block +1.5 mg/lb (3.3 mg/kg) transdermal flunixin meglumine (F) (n = 61). Ear flicking (p = 0.001), head shaking (p < 0.001), tail flicking (p < 0.001), interaction with the environment (p < 0.001), grooming (p < 0.01), posture changes (p < 0.05), and standing (p < 0.001) were impacted by the time relative to the procedure. Cortisol levels rose post procedure (p < 0.001). There was no difference in rates of behaviors or cortisol between treatments. These results indicate that calves showed alterations in behavior and cortisol in response to disbudding but not between treatments. We conclude that the pain management protocol for disbudding, which included transdermal flunixin meglumine with a lidocaine cornual nerve block, did not show significant differences from protocols using meloxicam with a lidocaine block, or a lidocaine block alone.

Using Sheep Facial Grimace Scale, Infrared Thermography and Cortisol Hormone to Measure Pain in Sheep Infected With Mastitis Disease

“…Cortisol levels were also found to be increased in animals such as of calves after normal husbandry procedures such as disbudding (Gaab et al, 2022); and sheep after shearing (Arfuso et al, 2022). In another study undertaken by Weaver et al (2021) on Merino ewes was to measure cortisol levels when administrating animals with saline or hydrocortisone acetate injection.…”

A Clinical Trial on the Welfare Effects of Administering Meloxicam to 10 to 21 Day Dairy Calves Following Caustic Paste Disbudding

“…According to Heinrich et al, (2010) , the incidence of behaviors was minimal during the early hours of the day, reached its highest point in the afternoon, and decreased in the evening. This suggests that the timing of observation could have a significant impact on the behavioral parameters we are interested in, which are believed to be associated with pain and distress in calves ( Heinrich et al, 2010 ; Gaab et al, 2022 ). During our experiment, we monitored the frequencies of various behaviors at three different time points, namely 0700, 1200, and 1900 hours, on days −1, 1, and 2 ( Figure 1A ).…”

“…At 0700, 1200, and 1900 hours in the evening on days −1, 1, and 2, four experienced experimenters, standing 5 m away and unaware of the calves’ treatment to minimize subjective bias, observed the frequencies of head shaking, head rubbing, ear flicking, tail flicking, kicking, and head passing through the fence with their eyes. Referencing previous studies ( Heinrich et al, 2010 ; Gaab et al, 2022 ), Table 1 illustrates the quantitative criteria for the behavioral parameters.…”