Topical anaesthetic and wound care for calves.

Animal welfare is important for your livestock and for you.

The practices of castrating, disbudding and dehorning calves are considered essential to good herd management and the ongoing welfare of your cattle.

These procedures reduce sexual activity and aggression, avoid unwanted breeding, reduce injury to cattle and damage to structures, and make cattle safer to work with.

Producers, their customers and consumers are more interested than ever before in animal welfare and an important aspect of that is managing and controlling pain when these types of procedures are carried out.

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Best practice is essential for our industry

The Australian Animal Welfare Standards and Guidelines for Cattle were published with support of Government, Australian Dairy Farmers, the Australian Lot Feeders Association and the Cattle Council of Australia. It addresses a wide range of important welfare considerations that are of significance to all producers and for the cattle industry as a whole. Specifically in relation to surgical procedures on cattle, the Guidelines recommend:

  • The use of pain relief.
  • Castration, disbudding and dehorning should be carried out as young as possible.
  • Disbudding should be done in preference to dehorning. For disbudding, hot-iron cautery is preferred over excision methods.
  • Bleeding from the surgical site should be minimised.
  • Good hygiene and use of disinfectants should be adopted to reduce infection risk.
  • Bleeding from the surgical site should be minimised.
“The development and use of Tri-Solfen is crucial in advancing animal welfare in Australia. It’s an important step in diminishing the concerns of producers and consumers on the adverse welfare outcomes of pain inflicted during interventions performed routinely in livestock husbandry.”

Peter A Windsor – DVSc PhD DipECSRHM Professor Emeritus,

The University of Sydney, NSW

Tri-Solfen is a formulation with a powerful combination of two local anaesthetics for rapid and longer-term pain relief.

Where does Tri-Solfen fit in?

Tri-Solfen is an easy to administer, non-pre-scription, over the counter formulation with a powerful combination of two local anaesthetics for rapid and longer-term pain relief, adrenaline to reduce bleeding and an antiseptic agent to help reduce infection risk. Tri-solfen’s gel formulation also helps to seal the wound for improved wound healing.

Tri-Solfen is the only product registered in Australia for cattle that has all of these modes of action, leaving it unrivaled for these types of surgical wounds.

Clinical studies, conducted by world leading universities have shown the positive effect Tri-Solfen has on reducing pain. Importantly, over many years, producers have seen the proof of Tri-Solfen’s positive effects on stock behaviour, right from the moment of application.

Tri-Solfen fits perfectly with your goal to provide a high standard of care for your livestock. It also fits with the industry’s objective to meet consumer expectations that livestock production must include a high level of consideration for animal welfare.

How does Tri-Solfen work?

Tri-Solfen is a viscous liquid that is easily applied to surgical wounds using the dedicated Tri-Solfen applicator. Tri-Solfen’s novel formulation contains a unique combination of 4 ingredients:

  • Lignocaine and Bupivacaine – local anaesthetics that provide pain-relief on surgical wounds.
  • Adrenaline – to reduce bleeding.
  • Cetrimide – an antiseptic agent to help reduce the risk of infection.

When applied correctly with the dedicated Tri-Solfen applicator it forms a foaming gel over the wound that helps to protect the wound from secondary infection and aids in the wound healing process.

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Tri-Solfen is a unique 4-in-1 wound care product, there’s no other product like it.

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Both fast and longer acting pain relief

Lignocaine – is a fast-acting anaesthetic, com-monly used in surgical procedures in humans and animals. In Tri-Solfen it provides animals with fast acting pain relief.

Bupivacaine – is a longer-acting anaesthetic that provides prolonged pain relief.

The unique formulation blocks the nerve signals from damaged tissue that are responsible for the sensation of pain. This reduces the animal’s pain response, resulting in animals becoming visibly more comfortable and importantly returning to their normal feeding and mothering up.

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Reduction in post-operative bleeding

Adrenaline – works by constricting blood vessels that have been cut during surgery. This reduces the loss of blood and limits the risk associated with increased stress and shock to the animal. Adrenaline also prolongs the anaesthetic effect on the wound due to a reduced rate of systemic absorption of the anaesthetics.

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Reduced wound healing time

Cetrimide – is an antiseptic agent. It helps reduce the risk of bacterial contamination and infection of wounds. Infection sets back the healing process and in the worst cases can lead to mortality. Reduced bleeding from adrenaline and the disinfectant qualities of cetrimide help the healing process to get started faster. It is also important to use sound surgical procedures as outlined in the MLA document; “A guide to best practice husbandry in beef cattle: Branding, castrating and dehorning”. 2019.

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Reducing inflammation and long-term pain

Reducing bleeding and infection helps to minimise the inflamation process, reducing and slowing down the pain cascade process.
The unique Tri-Solfen formulation assists in the reduction of inflamation in the first 24 hours after the surgical procedure and plays a role in reducing pain levels.

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Independent university research

Clinical studies compared Tri-Solfen treated castrated calves to untreated castrated calves and calves which were not castrated. Pain was assessed by applying an electronic anesthesio-meter and von Frey monofilaments to the wound and surrounding skin, to provide a calibrated force to the castration wound. A numerical rating scale (NRS) score was then recorded based on the animal’s reflexes when the force was applied to the wound. Results are shown in Figure 1 below. A higher NRS score reflects greater wound sensitivity and subsequently greater pain stimulation.

Castrated calves treated with Tri-Solfen displayed:

• Similar behaviours to the uncastrated calves.
• Less pain-related behaviours than untreated castrated calves at all time points after castration.
• Significantly higher pain thresholds in wounds and surrounding skin to the untreated calves.

The onset of pain relief was rapid at the time of surgery and lasted up to 24 hours after castration. As evidenced by the rise in wound sensitivity of untreated calves over time, Tri-Solfen was also effective in reducing the post-surgical hyper-sensitivity. It is thought that this is an effect of the adrenaline in the formulation.

Adrenaline constricts blood vessels, which reduces bleeding and prolongs the action of local anaesthetics by slowing their absorption. Reducing blood flow to the surgical site also suppresses the inflammatory cascade so nerve endings are not exposed to inflammatory compounds that would normally sensitise them.

Tri-Solfen is available in
1L, 5L and 20L packs

Are you applying Tri-Solfen correctly? Find out below…

DOWNLOAD TRI-SOLFEN TECHNICAL NOTE

What should I know about application?

Always read the label for correct dosing and other relevant information – including correct hygiene and the cleaning of applicators.

Tri-Solfen is applied to the wound using the speci-fically designed Tri-Solfen applicator. You must use this applicator because the spray tip and castration nozzle have been designed to ensure that Tri-Solfen is converted from liquid to a gelling foam that adheres to the wound.

The applicator comes with a short fan tip that is suitable when dehorning or disbudding.

When castrating you must use the special castration nozzle which is designed to deliver Tri-Solfen into the vaginal tunic (tunica vaginalis). If you don’t have a second applicator the castration nozzle will also generate the foaming gel for treating horn buds or other areas.

To create the foam you need to operate the applicator firmly and quickly.

Withholding periods:

MEAT:
Treated cattle must not be supplied or sold for slaughter for human consumption for at least 90 days following treatment.

MILK:
DO NOT USE on lactating or pregnant cows where milk may be used or processed for human

TRADE ADVICE:
Export Slaughter Interval (ESI): DO NOT USE less than 90 days before slaughter for export. Before using this product confirm the current ESI on the APVMA website: www.apvma.gov.au.

Hear from our valued customers about how they use Tri-Solfen

NSW

VIC

QLD

SA

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Download the brochure and learn more about Tri-Solfen today!

Brochure Beef

Find out more about Tri-Solfen.

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    Dechra Veterinary Products (Australia) Pty. Ltd.

    2 Cal Close, Somersby NSW 2250 Australia

    Phone: 1300 015 825

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    References:

    1. Australia Animal Welfare Standards and Guidelines for Cattle. Endorsed Jan 2016.
    2. Lomax, S. and Windsor, P.A. (2013). Topical anaesthesia mitigates the pain of castration in beef calves. J.Anim. Sci. 91:4945-4952.
    3. Espinoza, C. Lomax, S. and Windsor, P (2010). The effect of topical anaesthesia on pain alleviation in calves post-dehorning.
    Proceedings of the 44th Congress of the International Society of Applied Ethology (ISAE).

    Resources:

    The Australian Animal Welfare Standards and Guidelines for Cattle Cattle-Standards – DOWNLOAD PDF
    The Australian Animal Welfare Standards and Guidelines for Sheep (link to a PDF doc attached) Sheep-Standards – DOWNLOAD PDF
    Cattle Council – Animal Welfare Statement 2020 (link to a PDF doc attached) 20201204 – CCA – DOWNLOAD PDF
    MLA Fact sheet | Pain mitigation in sheep and cattle (link to PDF attached) 11-11327 – DOWNLOAD PDF
    Safety Data Sheet – DOWNLOAD PDF

    ® Tri-Solfen is a registered trademark of Animal Ethics Pty Ltd