Measuring behavioral and physiological responses to pain mitigation for ovariectomy in Bos taurus yearling beef heifers
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Ovariectomy (spaying) using the trans-vaginal dropped ovary technique (DOT) is performed to prevent pregnancy in cull female beef cattle that are not retained for breeding stock in areas practicing extensive grazing management. There are no reports describing analgesia for this surgical procedure. The objective of this study was to measure behavioral and physiological responses to determine whether an analgesic protocol of BXK [butorphanol (0.01 mg/kg), xylazine (0.02 mg/kg), and ketamine (0.04 mg/kg)] injected intramuscularly (i.m.) before spaying could mitigate procedural and immediate postsurgical pain, and whether oral meloxicam (1 mg/kg) administered at the time of spaying could mitigate postsurgical inflammatory pain. Forty-four red Angus and Angus crossbred yearling heifers (322 ± 27.0 kg BW) were randomly allocated to 1 of 3 groups: PALP (control; palpated but not spayed; n = 14), SPAY (spayed with no analgesia; n = 15), and BXKM (spayed with analgesia; n = 15). Behavioral measurements included visual analog scale (VAS) score, flight speed (FS), stride length (SL), and gait score (GS), as well as activity (lying, standing) and feeding behavior. Physiological measurements included salivary cortisol (SC), haptoglobin (Hp), serum amyloid A (SAA), substance P (SP), complete blood count (CBC), and rectal temperature (RT). Saliva and blood samples were collected, and RT, FS, SL, and GS were measured on day -1, day 0 (time of palpation/spaying), and hours 1, 2, 4, and days 1, 2, 4, and 7 after palpation/spaying. The BXKM heifers had lower SC concentrations than SPAY heifers at 1 h (P = 0.01) and 2 h (P = 0.004). Heifers treated with BXKM had Hp concentrations lower than SPAY heifers at 2 d (P = 0.01), 4 d (P < 0.001), and 7 d (P = 0.008), and lower Hp concentrations than PALP heifers at 4 d (P < 0.001). Concentrations of SAA were greater (P = 0.04) in BXKM heifers than in PALP heifers at 1 h and lower in PALP heifers than in BXKM heifers (P = 0.02) and SPAY heifers (P = 0.05) at 1 d. Heifers in the BXKM group had higher RT than PALP and SPAY heifers at 1 h (P < 0.001) and 2 h (P = 0.004). Results suggest that DOT ovariectomy is acutely stressful and painful and administration of BXK before spaying and meloxicam at the time of spaying mitigated the procedural and postsurgical stress, pain, and inflammation.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".