Post‐operative pain behaviour associated with surgical castration in donkeys ( Equus asinus )

Made available in DSpace on 2020-12-12T01:30:08Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2020-01-01 Background: Recognising pain in donkeys is challenging because they are stoic. Objectives: To identify the responses of donkeys before and after surgical pain. Study design: Prospective, short-term longitudinal pre- and post-intervention observations. Methods: Forty adult donkeys underwent surgical castration after sedation with intravenous (IV) xylazine, induction with guaiphenesin/thiopental IV and maintenance of anaesthesia with isoflurane and local anaesthetic blockade. Four hours after recovery from anaesthesia, flunixin meglumine 1.1 mg/kg, dipyrone 10 mg/kg and morphine 0.2 mg/kg IV were administered. Behavioural responses exhibited by the animals housed in individual stalls were recorded in four 30-min videos: before castration (M0), and 3.5-4.0 hours (M1), 5.5-6.0 hours (M2) and 23.5-24.0 hours after recovery from anaesthesia (M3). To exclude the influence of insects, the behaviour of six apparently pain-free donkeys was compared with and without the presence of faeces and urine in the stall. Results: When compared with presurgical baseline behaviours (M0), after surgery (M1) donkeys raised their pelvic limbs more (P =.003). When compared with M1, after analgesia (M2), the median frequencies of ear movements (44 vs 16; P