Behavioural responses of lambs to common painful husbandry procedures
The behavioural responses of groups of 10 lambs were examined for 90min following a range of commonly used husbandry procedures. The treatment groups were, control handling only (control); ear tagging (ET); tail docking by hot docking iron (HD); tail docking by rubber rings (RRT); castration by rubber rings (RRC); tail docking and castration by rubber […]
Acute effects of mulesing and alternative procedures to mulesing on lamb behaviour
The practice of surgical mulesing is used as a preventative measure against flystrike in sheep. However, this practice raises welfare concerns due to the severity of the wound and the pain inflicted. Alternative procedures to mulesing have been investigated, but few of these studies have investigated the impact of mulesing and alternative procedures to mulesing […]
The use of quantitative risk assessment to assess lifetime welfare outcomes for breech strike and mulesing management options in Merino sheep
In Australia, flystrike can severely compromise sheep welfare. Traditionally, the surgical practice of mulesing was performed to alter wool distribution and breech conformation and thereby reduce flystrike risk. The aim of this study was to use published data to evaluate the effectiveness of an epidemiologically based risk assessment model in comparing welfare outcomes in sheep […]