<b>Cautery disbudding in calves: A comparative assessment of topical wound treatments</b>
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Background: Cautery disbudding is routinely performed on dairy calves to prevent horn growth but this creates open wounds that require effective management. Topical antibiotic products are commonly used, yet evidence supporting their efficacy is limited. Non-antibiotic alternatives may promote healing while supporting antimicrobial stewardship. Aim: To compare wound healing outcomes following cautery disbudding in calves treated with either a non-antibiotic aluminum aerosol bandage, an antibiotic spray, both, or no topical treatment. Methods: In this randomized multicenter study, 480 calves aged 7-35 days were assigned to one of four treatment groups: (A) antibiotic spray (10% oxytetracycline) plus an aluminum aerosol bandage, (B) antibiotic spray (10% oxytetracycline) only, (C) aluminum aerosol bandage only, or (D) no topical treatment. All calves received sedation, local anesthesia, and analgesia. Wound healing was monitored via wound diameters (WD; mm) and lesion score (LS; scale 0-3) every 7 days from Day 0 (D0) to Day 35 (D35) post-disbudding. Results: From D0 to D21, group differences in WD and LS were inconsistent and mostly non-significant. However, by D28 to D35, calves in Group C (aluminum aerosol bandage only) showed significantly improved healing. At D35, mean WD (mean ± SD) in Group C was 2.5 ± 3.25 mm versus 4.3 ± 4.27 (Group A, p=0.0010), 5.3 ± 4.49 (Group B, p0.0001), and 4.5 ± 4.48 (Group D p=0.0003). Furthermore, at D35, the overall mean LS score in Group C was lower and showed improvement versus Group A (p=0.0038), Group B (p<0.0001), and Group D (p=0.0006). Conclusion: Topical application of an aluminum aerosol bandage significantly reduced wound size and improved lesion scores in calves by D28 and D35 post-disbudding. These results suggest that a non-antibiotic aluminum topical spray offers an effective, welfare-supporting alternative to antibiotic wound treatments.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| 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 teacher head, 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".