Merck Animal Health

…No adverse health effects were observed in Tri-Solfen® -treated Citation: Sheil, M.; Chambers, M.; animals, even those receiving 5× the recommended dose, with no clinically significant differences Polkinghorne, A.; Sharpe, B…

…Animal Health Research Merck Animal Health, 35500 W 91st Street, DeSoto, Kansas 66018, USA; 2American Association of Swine Reviews 22, 163–176. https://doi.org/10.1017/ Veterinarians, 830 26th Street, Perry…

ansdermal, Merck Inc, Madison, New Jersey) (US Food and and biopterin) have been associated with stressful situations such Drug Administration, 2017). Pressure mat analysis is recognized as piglet castration (Marsálek et al…

Animal (2019), 13:11, pp 2586 – 2593 © The Animal Consortium 2019 doi:10.1017/S1751731119000491 animal Behavioural measures reflect pain-mitigating effects of meloxicam in combination with Tri-Solfen® in mulesed Merino lambs L. Inglis, S. Hancock , M. Laurence and A. Thompson† School of Veterinary and Life Sciences, Murdoch University, Murdoch, WA 6150, Australia (Received 20 March 2018; Accepted 17 January 2019; First published online 2 April 2019) Flystrike costs the Australian industry $173 to 280 M per annum and 70% to 80% of Merino lambs are currently mulesed to reduce the risk of flystrike. To alleviate welfare concerns there has been widespread adoption of analgesics to mitigate the pain associated with mulesing. The objective of this experiment was to determine the effectiveness of Tri-Solfen® and meloxicam (Metacam® 20) at reducing pain-related behavioural responses to mulesing in Merino lambs. One hundred and forty Merino lambs were allocated to one of seven treatment groups: (1) non-mulesed (Control); (2) mulesed with no pain relief; (3) subcutaneous (s.c.) meloxicam administered 15 min before mulesing; (4) Tri-Solfen® administered at time of mulesing; (5) Tri-Solfen® and saline injection (s.c.) 15 min before mulesing; (6) Tri-Solfen® and meloxicam (s.c.) 15 min before mulesing; and (7) meloxicam (s.c.) at time the of mulesing. Behavioural responses such as standing, walking and lying were measured every 15 min for 6 h on the day of marking and for up to 2 h for 4 days thereafter. Standing (hunched v. normal) and walking (stiff v. normal) behaviours were then categorised into pain- and normal-related behaviours while lying remained in its own category. Mulesed lambs with no pain relief displayed significantly more pain-related behaviours than

…Topical anaesthetic products were supplied by Bayer Animal Health Australia (https://www.bayer.com.au/ en/about/profile-and-organisation/animal-health/). Introduction Meat and Livestock Australia and Bayer Animal Dehorning of…

Analgesia for Surgical Husbandry Procedures in Sheep and Other Livestock Dr Meredith L Sheil, Animal Ethics Pty Ltd, Associate Sydney University Faculty of Veterinary Science SUMMARY Surgical husbandry procedures in livestock are invariably associated with pain and stress, yet are traditionally performed without analgesia. Concern for the welfare of animals undergoing these procedures is contributing to major conflicts between farmers and animal advocacy organisations with important negative trade implications. Whilst the ultimate long term solution is to breed animals that do not require these procedures, or to find painless alternative practices, this will take time and a significant research effort in most cases. In the meantime, there is an urgent need to find a more immediate way to alleviate welfare concerns. This can be achieved by developing effective low-cost analgesia for on-farm use, to allow surgical procedures in livestock to be performed as humanely as surgical procedures in domestic animals and humans, while long term solutions are pursued and implemented. The first step in reaching this goal was realised with the development and commercialisation of Tri-Solfen® (Bayer Animal Health, Gordon NSW). Tri-Solfen® is a low-cost, farmer-applied topical anaesthetic, haemostatic and antiseptic wound care product that significantly alleviates pain associated with mulesing. Subsequent research identified that pre-operative administration of Carprofen enhanced the analgesic effects. Used together these agents eliminate pain-related behaviour for 24 hours post mulesing and abolish the cortisol response, thus providing highly effective analgesia that equates to (if not surpasses) that which is achieved for routine surgical procedures in veterinary clinics, such as

…However, all piglets enrolled in Pre-weaned pigs dataset did receive intramuscular flunixin meglumine (2.2 mg/kg flunixin meglumine IM; Merck Animal Health, Millsboro, DE, US) one hour after surgery. The…

l of the product, as per label instructions. (1: immobile; 2: walking with difficulty; 3: walking normally). An ordi- Animals treated with MO received intra-muscular injections of the nal logistic mixed model was fitted to each data set with fixed effects product daily for 3 days, also at doses per label instructions (2-4 mg/kg). for Treatment, Day, Breed and Age (covariate), and a random effect for Clinical response observations were initially conducted and recorded by the individual Animal ID. A Treatment × Day interaction was included veterinary technicians with experience of observing animals with clini- in each of the models, to allow for a different shaped time course for cal FMD and these personnel trained the farmers in how to conduct the each treatment. Note that the fitted model returned a set of model- required observations. All assessors were blind to treatment to avoid based probabilities of obtaining each possible score (1 through 4, or 1 bias. The observations included the recording of any improvements in through 3), for the particular combination of terms in the model. The demeanour and interest and capacity of the animal to walk and eat, plus model was fitted using the clmm function in the ordinal package of R the following semi-quantitative clinical measurements: (Christensen, 2019), and probability estimates obtained using the em- means (Lenth, 2020) and RVAideMemoire (Hervé, 2020) packages in R. • coronary band lesion healing score (LHS) on a scale of 1 to 4 (adapted from Al-Lethie et al., 2018): • coronary band lesion size (cm): healing of coronary band lesions 2.6.2 | Binary data analysis was measured quantitatively in the field using a 30 cm ruler, every 3 days from day zero (D0) through day 15 (D15), with lesions pho- The status of cattle

PRODUCTION ANIMALS Effects of a topical anaesthetic formulation and systemic carprofen, given singly or in combination, on the cortisol and behavioural responses of Merino lambs to castration DR Pauli, C Lee, iG Colditz? and AD Fisher’* ( vee and tail docking of lambs are standard husbandry Objective To determine the effectiveness of a topical anaes- procedures in many sheep production systems. Castration thetic formulation (Tri-Solfen) with or without the administration permanently prevents the development of behavioural of a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (carprofen) on the pain characteristics of male rams such as aggression towards other rams and distress response associated with ring or surgical castration of and unwanted matings, Tail docking significantly reduces the risk ram lambs, of flystrike.’ Counterbalancing the life-long outcomes of these Procedures Merino ram lambs (n = 78) were allocated to 10 husbandry practices is the associated short-term pain. Considerable treatment groups: 4 groups of knife-castrated lambs and 4 groups research has therefore examined the welfare consequences of vari- of ring-castrated lambs received carprofen (4 mg/kg SC) and ous castration and tail docking methods, and the effectiveness of Tri-Solfen; 2 control groups (sham) received carprofen at 0 or4 mg/kg analgesic strategies,” SC, Measurements included plasma cortisol and haptoglobi n Dinniss et al found that infiltrating local anaesthetic into the scrotal concentrations, haematology, and behaviour, including posture, neck was an effective method of reducing the cortisol response of Results Knife-castrated jambs had higher peak cortisol and lambs to ring castration.’ Similarly, injection of local anaesthetic into integrated cortisol responses for the first 6h

…However, all piglets enrolled in Pre-weaned pigs dataset did receive intramuscular flunixin meglumine (2.2 mg/kg flunixin meglumine IM; Merck Animal Health, Millsboro, DE, US) one hour after surgery. The…