Pain Relief Guidance- Off label drugs
By Dr Mackie Hobson BSc(Agric),BVSc

1. Drugs

There are currently NO licensed pain relief drugs for Angora goats in South Africa so the advice (through your local vet) is to use pain relief drugs ‘off-label’.

SEE TABLE BELOW

A few basic options

For acute painful husbandry procedures such as ear notching, tagging or tattooing

• A topical Xylocaine spray (Schedule 1) can be obtained without the direct involvement of your vet.
• Meloxicam injection under the skin (Schedule 3, through your local vet)

For painful procedures such castration (burdizzo, elastic band)

• Meloxicam injection under the skin (Schedule 3, through your local vet)

For wounds, lameness, injury or illness (sweerklou, mastitis, pneumonia etc)

• Meloxicam injection under the skin (Schedule 3, through your local vet)

• It has been shown that the use of a vapocoolant spray reduced pain-induced behavioural responses after ear tagging and notching.*
• It has been shown that pre-emptive administration of meloxicam reduced plasma cortisol after ear tagging. **.
• There is some evidence of partial efficacy for analgesia following castration by rubber band ***

References:

Mims IDR 2021/22 IVS desk Reference- Volume 16

* Lomax, S.; Witenden, E.; Windsor, P.; White, P. Effect of topical vapocoolant spray on perioperative pain response of unweaned calves to ear tagging and ear notching. Vet. Anaesth. Analg. 2017, 44, 163–172

**. Numberger, J.; Ritzmann, M.; Übel, N.; Eddicks, M.; Reese, S.; Zöls, S. Ear tagging in piglets: The cortisol response with and without analgesia in comparison with castration and tail docking. Animal 2016, 10, 1864–1870.

***. Meléndez, D.M.; Marti, S.; Pajor, E.A.; Moya, D.; Gellatly, D.; Janzen, E.D. Effect of subcutaneous meloxicam on indicators of acute pain and distress after castration and branding in 2-mo-old beef calves. J. Anim. Sci. 2018, 96, 3606–3621.