- My name is Dr. Sandy Stuttgen.
I am the UW-Extension Agriculture Agent from Taylor County.
Prior to my joining UW-Extension, I practiced
for 18 years as a large animal, predominantly
dairy veterinarian from Clark and Marathon Counties.
I was raised on a dairy farm.
My husband and I currently own a small
beef operation.
- And I am Doctor Sarah Mills-Lloyd, also with
UW-Extension Agriculture Agent in Oconto County,
and it is my pleasure to be here with you today also.
I do come to Extension with eight years of our
General Veterinary Medicine, just like Sandy,
and I practiced in northeast Wisconsin.
- So, for this session, we're going
to talk about, did it move,
we're going to talk about three
well-being concerns
including dehorning or disbudding, it's not moving,
tail docking, and the use of antibiotics on farms.
So, is everybody in the room dairy based or
raise your hand if you're dairy based.
Raise your hands if you're beef.
Okay, I have more dairy than beef.
To the beef people, I apologize, perhaps
for all the dairy pictures; however
beef cattle need to be dehorned as well.
So, you will learn some things.
Some beef cattle need to be dehorned as well.
So, hopefully, you will learn some pointers
from our topic.
As I go forward, I do need to extend
some special thanks to Dr. Sheila McGurck
and Chelsea Hauschback from the UW-School
of Veterinary Medicine.
You're going to be viewing some of their
dehorning slides that they use to teach
students at the vet school.
So, as this hard theory (mumbles) article says
as media draws attention to our dairy industry
we need to continue to work towards
humane methods for general farm practices,
including dehorning calves.
Dehorning is necessary but so are solutions
to make it less painful,
says the article, but why is dehorning necessary?
In the dairy industry, it has been believed
for a long time that horned cattle have less
desirable production genetics behind them.
The dairy industry has opted to pursue
milk production and growth production over polledness.
Well, the reality is having polled animals
or having horns is a simple genetic inheritance
and it is not linked to production,
and it is possible to bring polledness
back into our dairy herds.
In fact, ABS Select Sires, Accelerated Genetics,
they all now have polled sires that you can
select from.
There are new genomics testings available
that you can use on your newborn calves
to determine if they carry the polled gene.
Inheritance of polledness is a simple one
inherited from both the mother and from the sire.
The polled gene is the dominant gene.
Having horns is a recessive trait.
As long as the calf inherits one polled gene,
the calf will be polled.
So, if we look at this picture, we have
two cattle on top, the sire and the dam.
Both of them are polled.
They were not dehorned before this picture was taken.
If we look at the genetics of the sire,
he has a homozygous
pair of polled genes.
He inherited polledness from both his parents.
The dam on the other hand is a heterozygous
polled animal.
She inherited the polled gene from one parent
but she also inherited the horn gene
from the other parent, but the polledness
is dominant.
So, she looks polled.
If you mate these two, all of their calves
will look polled.
For some of you who've studied
genetics in class, you may have seen
some of these 4 X 4 tables,
and the second item listed on this table
is exactly what we just saw with that picture
of that sire and that dam.
The homozygous polled sire mated
to that heterozygous polled female.
100% of those calves are gonna
look polled but 50% actually have
both polled genes and 50%
still carry the horn gene.
So, it's gonna take time, but you
can accomplish this by continuing
to mate for pollness.
Eventually, you will get to a herd
that does not have to be dehorned
or disbudded any longer.
The polled dairy cattle genetics
can be found listed on this website by breed.
So it is possible for you to find
these animals.
- So, just as a little overview on dehorning.
Horns are the major cause of carcass wastage
due to bruising.
Cattle with horns actually incur financial
penalties on sale, and dehorned cattle
require actually less feeding space.
So, removing those horns are a good task
to prevent injuries to people and to cattle.
Dehorned cattle also exhibit fewer
aggressive patterns of dominance behavior
over cattle with horns.
As a general overview, dehorning is actually
a process of which there's two different types.
We actually can remove the bud in disbudding
or we can do dehorning.
Horns are an adaptation of skin,
and that skin originates from germinal
tissue called corium.
That corium then processes
and then becomes the horn as they grow,
and with that, when we remove the horn
in the early stages of growth,
we refer to that as disbudding verses dehorning
as we let that horn grow, we then will have that
horn, that horn bud actually attaching
to the periosteum of the frontal bone
and on top of the frontal sinus.
So, as you know when the cattle become older,
what happens then is that that frontal
sinus will extend up into the horn
and will create a void in that horn.
With that then, there's consequences
of us dehorning at later stages in life,
and the stages of this dehorning
would cause then sinusitis, which is
an infection in that sinus because
we're exposing it to the environment.
Also then with that, we would have
a prolongation in wound healing
and also infection with that.
We need to dehorn at an early age
because as you can see, it's never too
early to not dehorn that animal,
and we really need to remove that horn
before six weeks of age,
before that horn bud actually attaches
to the periosteum of that bone,
and on the pictures that depict this
on the slides, you can see that there are
two different pictures here.
One denotes a one to three-day old calf,
of which that horn bud is not present
verses the two to four-month old calf
that you can actually see the horn bud
that has attached and become a bony
prominence on the top on the poll
of that animal.
There are many different methods
of dehorning.
One is actually using a hot iron disbudding tool
and they come in a couple different varieties.
One variety is through a butane dehorner
as noted here.
We would also have an electrical
disbudding tool and both of these
would be selected for the size
of the horn that you are trying to disbud.
They are very common and reliable tools
that we would use; however, it is still painful
for the animal.
There is a momentary pain degradation
because of the thermal injury that you
are applying to that horn and if excess
thermal heat is applied to that horn
you can actually cause thermal injury
burns to the bony structures
lying underneath of them.
Another tool that we have is actually
a scoop or dehorning spoon.
This is actually a Barnes dehorner,
and the Barnes dehorner is a tool to use;
however, it takes not only just
the corium because we need to remove
the corium in addition to remove that
horn for the longevity of the life
of that animal, but with this tool,
we also take additional surrounding skin,
which will cause other pain for that animal.
Another tool that we can use would be paste.
Caustic paste is used on younger calves;
however, there is a potential for damage
to surrounding tissues, especially the eyes,
skin surrounding that tissue, and also the ears.
So, we need to remember that when we're
dehorning animals with younger,
as younger animals with the paste.
Another process that you can use
is actually elastic bands.
These elastic bands would tighten
down on the horn and it actually
causes trauma to that animal.
It's a pain sensation that they
will feel and if you've ever
witnessed this, you can actually
see the head tilt, that they incur
because of the elastic bands placed
on those horns.
Dehorning is important, and it's important
to also incorporate your veterinarian
into the process of the pain management
tools that you have, as many of the prescription
drugs that are used for this are needing
to be prescribed to you by a veterinarian,
and you need to have a valid veterinary
client-patient relationship.
Prescription products include the local
anesthesia, which is Lidocaine, non-steroidal
anti-inflammatories, which Sandy will talk about that,
and also sedation using Xylazine.
Your veterinarian would also help you practice
this technique on your farm operation
because it does require some tools
to use this and use them properly.
Before we even clip the hair, the first thing we
need to do is restrain the animal by using a halter.
The next thing that we would need to do
would be to clip that hair around the horn base
in order to best visualize that horn bud.
So, clipping the area is essential if you're using
pasty dehorning,
but it's also helpful
with any dehorning method as you're preventing
that hair from matting and then thus then
reducing that risk of infection, which is potentially
could be there.
Sedation is optional, however, it can make
the process of what you do for yourself
and for the animal much easier.
The thing we need to remember is that
it takes about 5 to 10 minutes
after the administration of the medication
for that adequate sedation to incur.
So, typically, we would use Xylazine.
Xylazine requires then a veterinary prescription.
So, you need to have that veterinary valid
client-patient relationship, and it also
would incur some meat withhold time.
The meat withhold time established
at this current practice right now
is four days.
The next thing you need to do is
if you are using sedation, you need
to observe that animal very closely
until they're able to stand.
Xylazine can cause respiratory depression
and so we wanna make sure that that
animal is safe before we leave it on its own.
There is another way that can we actually
reverse it by using Tolazine, which is a
Xylazine reversal medication but that too
requires a veterinary patient relationship
through a veterinary prescription and
a four-day meat withhold.
- Sedation alone does not block
the pain of the disbudding
or the dehorning procedure.
In order to accomplish that,
we do need to numb the nerve.
We need to provide local anesthesia
to the nerve that innervates the horn,
and that nerve is called the cornual nerve.
It is a branch of the fifth trigeminal nerve.
So, we accomplish this by injecting Lidocaine
halfway between the eye and the horn,
and we put that Lidocaine in a subcutaneous
injection underneath the frontal ridge.
So, we locate where the cornual nerve is
by palpating that frontal ridge
formed by our frontal bone, which is like
our cheekbone.
We locate it halfway between the lateral
canthus or the outside aspect of the eye,
the part of the eye that's closer
to the ear, and we draw a line from that
up to the base of the horn.
We locate a halfway point between that
and that frontal bony ridge.
Palpate that and then we inject
2 cc of 2% Lidocaine solution under the skin.
You use a very fine needle for this.
A 20 or 22-gauge needle is ideal.
Using the Lidocaine, again, it's a prescription product.
Your veterinarian would be the one who would
allow you to have this drug, and then your
veterinarian can also show you how
to put the block in.
Lidocaine itself does have a 1-day meat withdrawal.
(mumbles)
For older calves, sometimes, you will need
to put additional local anesthetic
around the base of the horn,
where the cornual nerve becomes more
superficial again.
This will improve analgesia for those horned animals.
That's represented by that red semicircle,
placing the Lidocaine behind the actual horn itself.
Once the nerve block is in, the pain relief
is almost immediately, but you can give it
a couple of minutes just to make sure
that everything is good and numb,
and while you're doing that,
you would have turned on your dehorning
equipment so that it is good and hot
and ready to go.
At that point, then you would apply your
dehorning cautery
in a very appropriately-sized manner.
So, you're gonna select the tool that
fits the bud or the horn that you're using.
You're gonna apply steady pressure
while rotating back and forth
for a couple, five to seven seconds,
and then you repeat that on the other side.
After heat application, there will
be a 2 to 3-millimeter copper-colored ring
around that entire horn, and if you were
to palpate what's left of the horn,
that should be very easily moved
by your finger.
The local anesthetic that we put in
the Lidocaine abolishes the indicators
of pain for the duration of its action,
but Lidocaine wears off, and when it does
the animal will start to exhibit pain again.
Calves exhibit pain by shaking their head,
by looking uncomfortable.
They rise and they lay down.
They stop eating.
So, it can behoove us to go ahead and try
to extend some of that pain relief
by offering some non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs.
This slide lists some of the drugs that have
been used in the past.
Flunixin is the Banamine product.
Phenylbutazone and ketoprofen are both drugs
that are not approved for use in livestock today,
and then there's aspirin.
Aspirin Bolus can be used, although they
have no formal FDA approval,
but if you look at the slide, you will see
that the half-life of aspirin
is about a half an hour in calves.
They're gonna get pain relief
for about a half an hour.
Banamine will provide you about
a three to a eight-hour half-life,
but when you use Banamine, again you incur
a meat withdrawal and Banamine
has to be given IV.
So, again your veterinarian would have
to show you how to place Banamine
in the vein
of these calves, and the Banamine then incurs
the four-day meat withdrawal.
So, is there something better for analgesia?
There is now currently a drug that has
been approved for humans to treat arthritis
and it's called meloxicam.
Meloxicam tablets have 100% oral bioavailability
in ruminant calves.
So, they work.
They actually provide a full 27 hours
of pain relief.
So, this means they can be given once a day.
They come in a small tablet
and for a calf that's still on milk
they're pretty easy to give.
This drug is not available in the United States.
We get it from other countries, and in Canada
the meat withdrawal is 20 days.
Meloxicam does represent legal
extra-label drug use.
So again, you have to use your veterinarian
to get this drug, and your veterinarian
could help you with dosing and when
and how to give it.
- So we realized this talk is about pain
mitigation for animal well being; however,
we would be remiss if we didn't mention
tail docking and judicious use
of antibiotics.
Animal welfare aspect of tail docking
is under scrutiny.
It has been promoted and recommended
in the past, even by UW-Extension
under the guides that it has improved
milk quality; however, science does
not support this use, and major veterinary
medical associations and organizations
actually oppose tail docking,
the American Veterinary Medical
Association and the American Association
of Bovine Practitioners.
Major purchasers of fluid milk
and also processors are actually starting
to oppose this practice.
If you're a national dairy farm, farmers
assuring responsible management certified,
you will need to end tail docking by this year.
If not found in compliance, you will receive
a warning to change your practice.
After the warning, if you have not made
strides to change this action, milk
processors may end pickup for your
fluid milk that you have.
In this current economic climate,
are you willing to place yourself
in a position to not have an income
and try to find another outlet for your fluid milk?
These are current milk cooperatives
and cheese processors who uphold the National
FARM Program.
My question to you is, is your milk plant listed there?
These include Agropur, BelGioiso, Dairy Farmers
of America, Foremost Farms, Grande Cheese, Grassland,
Land O'Lakes, National Farmers Organization,
Saputo Cheese, and Sartori;
however, alternatives
to tail docking do exist.
Three alternatives would be cattle clippers,
sheep shears, and also a tail well.
Cattle clippers are used to trim
the switch to the long hairs on the tail
and to actually shave the tail.
It is time consuming and the blades
will dull quickly, especially if animals
are bedded in sand stalls and/or
they have manure tags on their tail.
Sheep shears are readily available,
and they're very easy to use.
In two to three quick snips,
you'll actually have those
switches trimmed.
They are easy to resharpen; however,
those sharp blades do pose risk
to workers and also cattle.
The tail well is a cordless drill attachment.
It's quick and it's done in one single easy
step of dehairing those switches;
however, it comes with an expense,
and the expense is not only in the piece
of equipment itself but also in the maintenance
of that piece of equipment in sharpening
and also in the cordless drill batteries
that you need to use.
So, who is really driving some of this change?
Most consumers have little or no animal
knowledge of agriculture.
There was a direct connection to agriculture
about 50 years ago, but now we are three
to four generations removed from our agrarian society.
When consumers think of dairy farms,
they envision really old pastoral scenes
of cows grazing on grass and calves
frolicking in the field, but what does
this mean for farmers?
Not only are tail docking, dehorning,
and judicious use of antibiotics
consumer and industry concerns,
they are ours too as producers and farmers.
If your milk is sold to milk cooperatives
and cheese processors who are national
farm certified and compliant, you may need
to address the issue of pain mitigation
and management practices.
Some definitions about what and how to accomplish
this on our dairy, beef, swine, and poultry
operations have already been established
for us by corporations.
If you look at Nestle's website,
you can find the written statements
about farm animal health and welfare.
As stated on their website in 2014,
"We continue to build on public commitment
"to continuously improve the health,
"care, and welfare of farm animals
"and our global supply chain."
Their commitment is built around
the internationally recognized Five
Freedoms established in 1965.
These Five Freedoms are the freedom
from hunger, thirst, and malnutrition,
freedom from fear and distress,
freedom from physical and thermal
discomfort, freedom from pain, injury
and disease, and freedom to express
normal patterns of behavior.
If we look closer at the practices
they advocate, you will find this actually
on their website,
and you will notice, on the wording, it says
"Some specific practices we have committed
"to eliminate include" if we look at for cattle,
it lists dehorning, tail docking, disbudding,
and castration without anesthetic and analgesia.
Pain mitigation is their concern,
and it should have been ours as producers all along;
however, now our agriculture industry is needing
to follow protocol set for us, rather
leading the charge our self on these issues.
- Antibiotics are medications that are used
to treat bacterial infections.
The problem is that bacteria are developing
resistance to the antibiotics at a faster
rate than what pharmaceutical companies
are designing new antibiotics.
Antibiotic-resistant bacteria is now considered
to be a global, public health threat.
So, we need to handle antibiotics
as the precious resource that they are.
There are new federal rules coming
in to play this year for how we will
use antibiotics on our farm.
In the past, we've been allowed to use
feed and water antibiotics
in a way that
would produce and encourage
the growth and production of animals.
That use is being banned.
Going forward, we have to,
we can only use antibiotics to treat
and control and prevent infections.
Going forward, antibiotic use
on farms will be more and more
under the direction of your veterinarian.
Using our best management practices reflected
by the Five Freedoms is what really helps
us to prevent infections, and therefore,
allows us to not have to use antibiotics,
and it's not just Nestle who has this perspective.
These points listed here in this slide
summarize Walmart's written statements
for how they plan to provide their customers
with safe, affordable, and sustainable food,
as well as promote the humane treatment of animals.
Their written statement is summarized by
these four points, and if you as a farmer
don't follow these four points,
then perhaps Walmart will not procure
food from you.
It is expected that farmers will not
tolerate and will report all instances of animal abuse.
It is expected that farmers will adopt
the Five Freedoms that Sarah just mentioned,
and that you will implement good management
practices and that you will be transparent
in what you are doing on your farm.
It is important that we explain
and discuss what it is
we are doing on our farms,
what procedures are being used on a daily basis,
that we justify what we are doing,
including the antibiotics that we use.
Recognition of pain in cattle is difficult.
Cattle are prey animals.
They will hide the fact that they
are painful, but just because they're
not showing their pain, that does not mean
we should continue to ignore the fact that
they are painful;
however, this is what
we're currently up against.
There are no pain relief drugs specifically
approved for analgesia in cattle in the United States.
So, all the drugs we use are extra-label
and have to be used under the supervision
of a veterinarian.
There is a time delay between drug administration
and their onset of activity.
Routes of administration can be inconvenient,
like Banamine has to be given IV.
The drugs themselves can have short half-lives.
So you have to necessitate frequent
re-administration, and then there's these
costs of these drugs, and the cost of the meat
and the milk withdrawal.
We can overcome all of these points
and we will.
They will all become less cumbersome as we
become more educated and more willing
to practice them and incorporate them
into our daily routines.
Including polledness in our selection indexes
and in our long-term breeding strategies
has the potential to reduce and eventually
eliminate the need to dehorn.
Remember, there are things that we
can do to help build our rapport
with our consumer and corporations
to let them know that we are striving
to be and to do the best we can
for our industry.
It'll take concerted effort by all of us
to keep moving forward with our management
practices to alleviate animal welfare concerns.
Animal welfare is not going away
and nor should it, but we can be
the first to incite change rather than
be dictated to, as to what changes
we will have to make.
(audience applauds)