Pain relief during lamb tailing is worth the money - New Zealand Merino Company

Paul Ensor is a New Zealand Merino Company director and wool supplier. Photo / RNZ / Cosmo Kentish-Barnes

By RNZ

A New Zealand Merino Company director and wool supplier says using pain relief during tailing - which will be mandatory for its suppliers from next year - is worth the money to reduce the lamb’s stress levels.

Many farmers docked the tail of their sheep under the age of six months to reduce the risk of flystrike - but for sheep older than six months, it had to be carried out by a veterinarian with pain relief.

From June 2025, all of New Zealand Merino Company’s suppliers of ZQ-accredited Merino wool will have to administer pain relief for castration, tailing and shearing injuries - as the wool marketing company aimed to secure premium market access for its Merino wool into clothing brands like Icebreaker and Smartwool.

The company said it was in the middle of a staged roll-out of the new pain relief requirements this month for those supplying wool under its ethics-focused ZQ accreditation.

Company director and fourth-generation farmer Paul Ensor farmed 6000 Merino sheep and 200 beef cattle across the 1000ha at high country Glenaan Station in the upper Rakaia Gorge in mid-Canterbury.

He was also the co-founder of Hemprino, a local clothing brand made from a Merino and hemp blend.

Ensor said he has used pain relief on his sheep farm for three years and while it was primarily linked to securing premium customers, greater animal welfare was also linked to better production.

“We see benefits at the time,” he said.

“Obviously, there’s an additional cost, but also we see that animals through the tailing shoot suffer less stress and they mother up more quickly with their mums post-tailing.

“So they’re able to move back to their pasture and start grazing and return to sort of normal behaviours quite quickly. So that makes them easier to handle.

“And we certainly notice that anecdotally you can see that they suffer less stress during the process, which has got to be a good thing.”

Ensor said staff carried out one injection under the skin each year per lamb during tailing and while it could be a “significant” cost, it was worth it.

He said as there were many products readily available these days, it was a “no-brainer” to use them.

“We use a product that’s under a dollar a lamb, but the thing is, when you factor that cost into the lifetime of the animal and its production, it becomes relatively insignificant,” he said.

“But also it enables you to access markets you wouldn’t do if you didn’t use it, so we’re getting premiums for our products that go through those standards, so we believe the payback is there.

“And also we just think it’s the right thing to do.”

Ensor urged any farmers with questions about using pain relief to head to farms using it.

- RNZ