Dataset Information

Effects of Topical Anaesthetic and Buccal Meloxicam Treatments on Concurrent Castration and Dehorning of Beef Calves.

ABSTRACT: The use of pain relief during castration and dehorning of calves on commercial beef operations can be limited by constraints associated with the delivery of analgesic agents. As topical anaesthetic (TA) and buccal meloxicam (MEL) are now available in Australia, offering practical analgesic treatments for concurrent castration and dehorning of beef calves, a study was conducted to determine their efficacy in providing pain relief when applied separately or in combination. Weaner calves were randomly allocated to; (1) no castration and dehorning/positive control (CONP); (2) castration and dehorning/negative control (CONN); (3) castration and dehorning with buccal meloxicam (BM); (4) castration and dehorning with topical anaesthetic (TA); and (5) castration and dehorning with buccal meloxicam and topical anaesthetic (BMTA). Weight gain, paddock utilisation, lying activity and individual behaviours following treatment were measured. CONP and BMTA calves had significantly greater weight gain than CONN calves (p < 0.001). CONN calves spent less time lying compared to BMTA calves on all days (p < 0.001). All dehorned and castrated calves spent more time walking (p = 0.024) and less time eating (p < 0.001) compared to CONP calves. There was a trend for CONP calves to spend the most time standing and CONN calves to spend the least time standing (p = 0.059). There were also trends for the frequency of head turns to be lowest in CONP and BMTA calves (p = 0.098) and tail flicks to be highest in CONN and BM calves (p = 0.061). The findings of this study suggest that TA and MEL can potentially improve welfare and production of calves following surgical castration and amputation dehorning.

SUBMITTER: Van der Saag D

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5867523 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Effects of Topical Anaesthetic and Buccal Meloxicam Treatments on Concurrent Castration and Dehorning of Beef Calves.

Van der Saag Dominique D White Peter P Ingram Lachlan L Manning Jaime J Windsor Peter P Thomson Peter P Lomax Sabrina S

Animals : an open access journal from MDPI 20180228 3

The use of pain relief during castration and dehorning of calves on commercial beef operations can be limited by constraints associated with the delivery of analgesic agents. As topical anaesthetic (TA) and buccal meloxicam (MEL) are now available in Australia, offering practical analgesic treatments for concurrent castration and dehorning of beef calves, a study was conducted to determine their efficacy in providing pain relief when applied separately or in combination. Weaner calves were rando ...[more]

PMID: 29495653

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Project description:To assess the effects of a topical anaesthetic (TA) and buccal meloxicam (BM) on behaviour, maximum wound temperature and wound morphology following amputation dehorning of beef calves, 50 unweaned Hereford calves were randomly allocated to: (1) sham dehorning / control (CON, n = 14); (2) amputation dehorning (D, n = 12); (3) amputation dehorning with pre-operative buccal meloxicam (DBM, n = 12); and (4) amputation dehorning with post-operative topical anaesthetic (DTA, n = 12). Videos of the calves were captured for 3 h following treatment. Each calf was later observed for 5 min every hour and the frequency and duration of specific behaviours displayed during these focal periods was recorded. Infrared and digital photographs of dehorning wounds were collected from all dehorned calves on days 1, 3 and 7 following treatment. Infrared photographs were used to identify the maximum temperature within the wound area. Digital photographs were used to score wounds based on visual signs of inflammation and healing, using a numerical rating scale of 1 to 3, with morphological aspects of inflammation increasing and morphological aspects of healing decreasing with progressive scores. CON calves displayed fewer head shakes than all dehorned calves at 2 and 3 h following treatment (P = 0.025). CON and DTA calves displayed less head turns than DBM calves at 2 h following treatment (P = 0.036). CON calves displayed fewer combined point behaviours than all dehorned calves at 2 h following treatment (P = 0.037). All dehorning wounds had a greater maximum temperature on days 3 and 7 compared to day 1 (P = 0.003). All wound morphology scores decreased from day 1 to day 3 and wound morphology scores of DBM and DTA calves increased from day 3 to day 7 (P = 0.03). Although flystrike may have confounded these observations, no clear effects of TA or BM on behaviour, maximum wound temperature or wound morphology following dehorning of calves were observed. Further research is required to evaluate the analgesic efficacy of these products for amputation dehorning of calves.

Project description:To assess the effect of meloxicam and lidocaine on indicators of pain associated with castration, forty-eight Angus crossbred beef calves (304 ± 40.5 kg of BW, 7-8 months of age) were used in a 28 day experiment. The experiment consisted of a 2 × 2 factorial design where main factors included provision of analgesia and local anaesthesia. Analgesia consisted of: no-meloxicam (N; n = 24) single s.c. administration of lactated ringer's solution and meloxicam (M; n = 24) single dose of 0.5 mg/kg of s.c. meloxicam. Local anesthesia consisted of: no-lidocaine (R; n = 24) ring block administration of lactated ringer's solution or lidociane (L; n = 24) ring block administration of lidocaine. To yield the following treatments: no meloxicam + no lidocaine (N-R; n = 12), no meloxicam + lidocaine (N-L; n = 12), meloxicam + no lidocaine (M-R; n = 12) and meloxicam + lidocaine (M-L; n = 12). Salivary cortisol concentrations were lower (lidocaine × time effect; P < 0.01) in L calves than R calves 0.5 and 1 hours after castration, while concentrations were lower (meloxicam × time effect; P = 0.02) in M calves than N calves at 2, 4 and 48 hours. The serum amyloid-A concentrations were greater (lidocaine × time effect; P < 0.01) in R calves than L calves on days 1, 3, 21 and 28 after castration. Haptoglobin concentrations were greater (meloxicam × time effect; P = 0.01) in N calves than M calves 24 and 48 hours after castration. Lower (lidocaine effect; P < 0.01) visual analog scale (VAS) scores, leg movement frequencies and head movement distance were observed in L calves than R calves at the time of castration. Escape behaviour during castration was lower (lidocaine effect; P < 0.05) in L calves than R calves based on data captured with accelerometer and head gate devices. Scrotal circumference had a triple interaction (lidocaine × meloxicam × time; P = 0.03), where M-R calves had greater scrotal circumference than M-L calves 28 d after castration, but no differences were observed between both groups and N-R and N-L calves. No differences (P > 0.05) were observed for average daily gain (ADG), weights or feeding behaviour. Overall, both lidocaine and meloxicam reduced physiological and behavioural indicators of pain. Although there was only one meloxicam × lidocaine interaction, lidocaine and meloxicam reduced physiological and behavioural parameters at different time points, which could be more effective at mitigating pain than either drug on its own.

Project description:BackgroundBeef cattle experience several management challenges across their lifecycle. Castration and weaning, two major interventions in the early life of beef cattle, can have a substantial impact on animal performance. Despite the key role of the rumen microbiome on productive traits of beef cattle, the effect of castration timing and weaning strategy on this microbial community has not been formally described. We assessed the effect of four castration time windows (at birth, turnout, pre-weaning and weaning) and two weaning strategies (fence-line and truck transportation) on the rumen microbiome in a randomized controlled study with 32 male calves across 3 collection days (i.e., time points). Ruminal fluid samples were submitted to shotgun metagenomic sequencing and changes in the taxonomic (microbiota) and functional profile (metagenome) of the rumen microbiome were described.ResultsUsing a comprehensive yet stringent taxonomic classification approach, we identified 10,238 unique taxa classified under 40 bacterial and 7 archaeal phyla across all samples. Castration timing had a limited long-term impact on the rumen microbiota and was not associated with changes in alpha and beta diversity. The interaction of collection day and weaning strategy was associated with changes in the rumen microbiota, which experienced a significant decrease in alpha diversity and shifts in beta diversity within 48 h post-weaning, especially in calves abruptly weaned by truck transportation. Calves weaned using a fence-line weaning strategy had lower relative abundance of Bacteroides, Lachnospira, Fibrobacter and Ruminococcus genera compared to calves weaned by truck transportation. Some genes involved in the hydrogenotrophic methanogenesis pathway (fwdB and fwdF) had higher relative abundance in fence-line-weaned calves post-weaning. The antimicrobial resistance gene tetW consistently represented more than 50% of the resistome across time, weaning and castration groups, without significant changes in relative abundance.ConclusionsWithin the context of this study, castration timing had limited long-term effects on the rumen microbiota, while weaning strategy had short-term effects on the rumen microbiota and methane-associated metagenome, but not on the rumen resistome.

Dataset Information

Effects of Topical Anaesthetic and Buccal Meloxicam Treatments on Concurrent Castration and Dehorning of Beef Calves.

Publications

Effects of Topical Anaesthetic and Buccal Meloxicam Treatments on Concurrent Castration and Dehorning of Beef Calves.

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