@conference {41552,
	title = {The cost of alleviating the pain caused by the castration of beef calves},
	booktitle = {Proceedings of the New Zealand Society of Animal Production},
	volume = {65},
	year = {2005},
	month = {Jan},
	pages = {123-126},
	publisher = {New Zealand Society of Animal Production},
	organization = {New Zealand Society of Animal Production},
	address = {Christchurch},
	abstract = {  The pain caused by husbandry procedures such as dehorning or castration is of concern to those with an interest  in animal welfare. In the future farmers will be encouraged and perhaps obliged to provide analgesia for animals  subjected to these procedures. In New Zealand in the last decade veterinarians have developed a service for disbudding  dairy calves using the sedative xylazine and local anaesthesia and this has become popular with some dairy farmers.  This paper reports a financial analysis of the impact to the individual farmer and nationally of using different forms of  analgesia when castrating calves. Four scenarios and their costs were analysed: (1) the status quo ($0.28/calf); (2) the  use of local anaesthesia with increased labour costs ($1.56/calf); (3) the use of local anaesthesia plus systemic analgesia  with increased labour costs ($5.45/calf); and (4) the employment of a veterinarian to do the castration ($9.39/calf).  National costs ranged from $160,000 to $5,368,700 ($10 to $351 per farm) for the four scenarios. The proposed  scenarios were more expensive than the status quo but were still small relative to average total farm costs, i.e. $170,974  on New Zealand sheep and beef farms in 2001-02. These figures do not include any allowance for the cost of the  inconvenience of having to organise husbandry activities around veterinary visits. Farmers may resist the imposition any  of these 3 scenarios. In future the use of analgesics may become standard farm practice.   

},
	issn = {1176-5283},
	author = {Stafford KJ and Mellor DJ and Dooley AE and Smeaton D and McDermott A}
}
