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Millions of piglets on commercial production farms are tail docked each year to reduce the incidence of tail biting. While this procedure is known to be painful, piglets in the United States are often not provided analgesia or anesthesia for pain relief. The objectives of this study were to assess a multimodal approach to managing tail docking pain in piglets, using 0.4 mg/kg meloxicam (MEL), 0.04 mg/kg buprenorphine (BUP), and a topical cream that contains an anesthetic called lidocaine (MAX). The effectiveness of each drug and drug combination was evaluated using behavioral indicators, vocalization, and facial grimace analysis. This study also assessed whether male and female piglets responded differently to pain or pain treatments. Four-day-old piglets from 14 litters (n = 165 total) were used and piglets within a litter were randomly assigned to one of six possible treatments: MEL, BUP, MEL + BUP, MEL + BUP + MAX, no treatment (tail docked control), or sham (non-tail docked control). Treatments were administered intramuscularly (MEL, BUP) or topically on the tail (MAX) 20 min prior to tail docking.
Piglets administered MEL + BUP and BUP demonstrated significantly fewer pain behaviors than piglets in the MEL and no treatment group. MEL + BUP + MAX and BUP piglets also grimaced significantly less than piglets in the no treatment group. There were no significant differences in emitted vocalizations between the analgesia-treated piglets and the no treatment group, and both injection and tail docking elicited piglet vocalizations of similar frequency, power, and energy. There were no significant differences in behavior, facial grimacing or emitted vocalizations between male and female piglets.
All treatment groups with buprenorphine were able to alleviate tail docking-associated pain, suggesting that opioid administration is highly effective for managing piglet pain.
Abbie V Viscardi, Patricia Turner, 12 A multimodal approach for piglet pain management after tail docking, Journal of Animal Science, Volume 97, Issue Supplement_2, July 2019, Pages 6–7, https://doi.org/10.1093/jas/skz122.011