How can practical wound treatment and management strategies improve animal welfare and production outcomes following dehorning?
In this webinar, Dr Dominique Van der Saag from the University of Sydney presents findings from a series of research studies investigating practical, evidence-based approaches to improving outcomes following dehorning in beef cattle.
Learn about:
- The impact of horn size and wound severity on healing, recovery and growth performance
- New evidence on the use of aluminium wound sprays to improve dehorning outcomes
- When horn tipping may be a practical alternative to dehorning cattle with larger horns
- Management factors that influence bleeding, healing and production outcomes
- Practical recommendations to support informed on-farm decision making and improve animal welfare
You can watch the full recording or use the playlist below to jump to the start of a particular section within the presentation (29 minutes; published 30 October 2026 by FutureBeefAu).
You can view the presentation slides by clicking on: Dehorning webinar presentation slides in the download section to the right of your screen.
Keep checking back as we will have audience questions answered in a FAQ sheet here soon.
Full recording
Playlist
- Introduction and overview
- Why dehorning outcomes matter
- Producer Priorities
- Understanding the horn
- Dehorning mortality: What do we actually know?
- What would the ideal dehorning wound treatment do?
- Novel wound treatments investigated
- Existing wound treatments investigated
- Aluspray and bleeding reduction
- Wounds are highly variable
- Why Aluspray progressed to larger studies
- Key lesson from wound treatment study
- Larger study- Haemorrhage outcomes
- Infection and healing outcomes
- Weight gain outcomes
- What drives dehorning outcomes?
- Better outcomes require more than better products
- Horn tipping
- A modified dehorning technique
- Producer decision- support framework
- Future Directions of project
- Take home messages and acknowledgements
Additional resources
MLA guide to best practice husbandry in beef cattle: branding, castrating and dehorning (FutureBeef) →
Dehorning (FutureBeef) →
Australian animal welfare guidelines for cattle (Animal Welfare Standards Australia)→
Research paper: Attitudes towards pain relief and wound management, and their on-farm use during cattle dehorning in northern Australia (PDF 425kB, CSIRO Publishing) →
