Pharmacy researchers are working on number of projects aimed at formulating a drug that could mean the end of painful disbudding for dairy calves.
The drug is one of five Associate Professor Greg Walker and Dr Sumit Dadhwal are working on that hopes to improve animal welfare by being an alternative method to disbudding - the removal of calve’s horns.
The practise ensures herd-mates and people are not injured by the horns.
The growth of horns is notoriously difficult to breed out of cows because the genes associated with them are also closely linked with a cow’s ability to produce milk, which dairy farmers don’t want to impede.
With funding from animal health company, Welfare Concepts, Associate Professor Walker, Dr Dadhwal and their team are testing the new drug, which can be injected into the head of a calf and prevent its horn from growing in the first place, negating the need for disbudding.
Associate Professor Walker says developing the new veterinary medicines is about more than ethics; it is also financially wise given the dairy industry generates almost $20 billion a year in Aotearoa.
“We’re very excited to be using pharmaceutical science to help make livestock farming more sustainable, ethical and profitable,” Associate Professor Walker says.
“We also hope to use some of this funding to give pharmacy and pharmaceutical science students learning and internship opportunities where they can see the varied work they could do in the industry, and how it makes a tangible impact on society.”
Dr Dadhwal says it’s “wins all round” in terms of innovating medicines which improve the lifestyle of cattle, bettering food production, and making a profit.
“It’s fantastic to see funding in this area because a large part of the funding for animal welfare pharmaceuticals is taken up by the pets industry, for things like cats and dogs, but there’s great potential profits in the development of these drugs as well.”
The veterinary pharmaceuticals would be trialled in New Zealand, with the goal of having them implemented internationally as well, he says.
“It really is all-round a fantastic and impactful research project.”
Associate Professor Walker completed a PhD at Otago, which looked at drug delivery in salmon, before doing post-doctoral work in Austria and Germany. He then started a biotech company in England. He sold the company and returned to the University of Otago in 2013 to lecture and research.
Dr Dadhwal completed his PhD in pharmaceutical sciences at Otago in 2018 before working as a formulation scientist for Elanco Animal Health (previously Bayer) which led him to his work with Welfare Concepts.
- Kōrero by the Communications Adviser for the Division of Health Sciences