Abstract
BackgroundSince January 2019, surgical castration of male piglets must be performed using local anaesthesia, if farmers deliver pigs to the primary exporting slaughterhouses according to the “Danish quality scheme”; a voluntary initiative taken by the Danish pig industry. The approved procedure for local anaesthesia in Denmark is a three-step injection method with procaine. A comparison of lidocaine and procaine with the same concentration and injection methods of local anaesthetics has not previously been studied. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of two injection methods and two local anaesthetics on piglets’ avoidance behaviour (vocalisation and resistance movements) as well as the time spent on the procedures. The study included 203 male piglets that were randomly assigned to one of five treatments: 1. Control: Sham-handling without injection of local anaesthesia, 2. Pro3: Procaine injection using a three-step method, 3. Pro2: Procaine injection using a two-step method, 4. Lid3: Lidocaine injection using a three-step method, 5. Lid2: Lidocaine injection using a two-step method. During injection of local anaesthesia and castration, vocalisation was measured using a decibel meter and resistance movements were registrated by video recordings.ResultsDuring castration, piglets treated with local anaesthesia showed significantly reduced vocalisation and resistance movements and time spent on castration was also significantly reduced compared to the control group. During injection of the local anaesthesia, the piglets had significantly increased vocalisation and resistance movements compared to the control group. Piglets injected with lidocaine had a significantly reduced resistance movement score and a tendency to reduced vocalisation compared to piglets injected with procaine. No differences in avoidance behaviour were found between the injection methods.ConclusionsThe use of local anaesthesia, irrespective of the method and local anaesthetic, was effective in reducing vocalisation and resistance movements during surgery as well as the time spent on castration.
Highlights
Since January 2019, surgical castration of male piglets must be performed using local anaesthesia, if farmers deliver pigs to the primary exporting slaughterhouses according to the “Danish quality scheme”; a voluntary initiative taken by the Danish pig industry
The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of two injection methods and two local anaesthetics on piglets’ avoidance behaviour as well as time spent on the procedures in a commercial herd
The results showed that local anaesthesia applied with a 25G needle reduced avoidance behaviour during castration of piglets in the treatment groups compared to control piglets
Summary
Since January 2019, surgical castration of male piglets must be performed using local anaesthesia, if farmers deliver pigs to the primary exporting slaughterhouses according to the “Danish quality scheme”; a voluntary initiative taken by the Danish pig industry. The approved procedure for local anaesthesia in Denmark is a three-step injection method with procaine. A comparison of lidocaine and procaine with the same concentration and injection methods of local anaesthetics has not previously been studied. The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of two injection methods and two local anaesthetics on piglets’ avoidance behaviour (vocalisation and resistance movements) as well as the time spent on the procedures. Skade et al Acta Vet Scand (2021) 63:1 the end of 2018 This was stated in the voluntary agreement ‘European Declaration on alternatives to surgical castration of pigs’ [1]. The first step of the declaration stipulated that all piglets should receive prolonged pain relief from January 2012, either alone or in combination with an anaesthetic in the form of a general anaesthetic or a local anaesthetic. Even though the primary goal of the declaration—to abandon surgical castration—was not achieved by the end of 2018, several European countries have made a local agreement to ban surgical castration without analgesia and/or anaesthesia [2]
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