Assessment of acute pain in farm animals using behavioral and physiological measurements.

Abstract

In this paper various aspects of animal pain and methods for its assessment are considered. The responses of lambs and calves to castration and of lambs to tail docking are used to illustrate quantitative approaches to the recognition and assessment of acute pain in farm animals. the validation of physiological and behavioral measurements for assessment of pain is examined by relating measurements made from young lambs, after a range of treatments, to an independent ranking of the order of severity of the treatments.