New Research on Methods for Alleviating Pain in Farm Animals: Welfare attention on surgical husbandry practices for farm animals focuses on the fact that many procedures involve innervated tissues and are traditionally performed without anaesthesia or analgesia. There are several approaches available for addressing welfare concerns surrounding these procedures. This paper examines performing the procedure without pain. Greatest pain relief, as indicated by the behavioural and cortisol responses to mulesing, was provided by the combined administration of the commercially-available topical anaesthetic formulation and the long acting NSAID carpofen. In effect, this treatment showed that it is scientifically possible to abolish the pain responses occurring in the hours after mulesing. You can download the full PDF of the report here.

Impact of topical anaesthesia on pain alleviation and wound healing in lambs after Mulesing: Tri-Solfen® effects rapid and prolonged wound analgesia, reduction in pain-related behaviour and improved wound healing in lambs undergoing routine mulesing, providing effective alleviation of pain associated with routine mulesing in sheep. You can download the full PDF of the report here.

Evaluation of an Integrated Pest Management System for Controlling Flystrike in the Absence of Mulesing: Blowfly strike in sheep is caused by infestations of larvae principally from the family Calliphoride, especially the species Lucilia cuprina . These larval infestations cause considerable economic losses to the wool industry due to the complications involved with the control of this disease. Two systematic means of control have been utilised to determine whether the use of an Integrated Pest Management (IPM) approach can be implemented and successfully control this crippling disease. Also the study aimed to establish the costs of this method compared to conventional control relying on mulesing. You can download the full PDF of the report here.

Report on likely increased prevalence of breech strike and increased mortalities from flystrike if sheep were not mulesed: There is overwhelming evidence that the combination of a modified radical mules operation and correct tail length is the single most cost-effective strategy to reduce breech strike in sheep (apart from the regular and repeated treatment of all sheep with one of the more recent insect growth regulator (IGR) class of insecticides). It is estimated that about 83.5% sheep in Australia are currently mulesed (86 million of the 103 million). Assuming that farmers would resort to a much greater use of chemicals to prevent breech strike, and more intensive sheep husbandry procedures, it is still likely that the number of sheep affected by breech strike in a 'typical' or normal year would increase to between 6.5 to 7 million sheep. From this figure, it is estimated that the number of sheep at risk of dying of breech strike if mulesing was not permitted would be in the order of 900,000 to 1,000,000 in a normal year. There would be 2-3 times this number of mortalities in years that were more conducive to flystrike, such as those with wet summers or warmer temperatures in spring. This has serious implications for animal welfare and the level of chemical residues on wool and in red meat produced by the Australian sheep flock. The considerably increased number of chemical treatments would also markedly increase the selection pressure for flies resistant to the available chemical groups. You can download the full PDF of the report here.