Visitors to rural stores in Australia and New Zealand may recently have noticed the appearance of a device that looks an orange and grey ray gun on display in the aisles, writes Robin Smith*.
Far from being a weapon, this is the Numnuts device – a recent invention aimed at improving lamb welfare by providing essential pain relief during both ring castration and tail docking. It is designed to be used with our local anaesthetic, NumOcaine (2% lignocaine).
Our customers are progressive farmers who see both the importance of improving lamb welfare, as well as ‘future proofing’ their business in the face of more stringent regulations along the supply chain. That last part is important. Markets are changing, as consumers in many countries become increasingly welfare aware.
This means they are selecting goods and services that come with the assurance of non-cruelty and sustainable values.
We’re seeing it on the supermarket shelves and in the European fashion businesses, where it’s no longer a matter of displaying the Woolmark, but also assuring consumers that sheep have been treated ethically throughout their lifetime. This increasingly means using pain relief for husbandry practices. We are watching the EU closely, as there is every sign that this will soon be mandated for imported lamb and wool products.
How on earth did I become involved with lamb welfare in Australia? I started out as a product design engineer with a Scottish company called 4c Design, but my grandfather was a sheep vet, as was my father; he developed the vaccine for the Barber’s Pole worm, called Barberbax. You could say I’ve got sheep health and wellbeing in my blood.
Twelve years ago, I had a chance conversation with someone from Meat and Livestock Australia (MLA), who highlighted the challenge facing sheep husbandry. MLA wanted help to alleviate the immediate pain experienced during lamb marking with rings.
Sheep anti-inflammatories only start being fully effective once the lambs are back in the paddock. That’s not soon enough. As most farmers will know from seeing thrashing, rolling, and wriggling from the pain of a ring on the tail or testicles, that is at its worst for the 45 minutes immediately after the ring is administered. And the higher the pain experience goes, the longer it takes to fall off.
Our design team were enthused by the challenge and threw themselves into a solution that would apply the rings and deliver a fast-acting anaesthetic in the right spot at the same time. With this basic concept established, we developed multiple prototypes as we worked towards a device that was easy to use and reliable, with a consistent and repeatable action.
However, it was hard to access funds for research in the UK. Cue a visit to Australia, where MLA and AWI both funded further R&D. Studies conducted by the world-class animal science research team at CSIRO from 2013 to 2018 found that lambs castrated and tail-docked with Numnuts and NumOcaine showed significantly fewer pain-related behaviours than lambs marked with the traditional pliers and hot knives.
The applicator device can be purchased via rural stores and our website. , NumOcaine is available from vets in Australia and New Zealand, and vet stores in NZ. So far, we’ve sold 50,000+ bottles of NumOcaine, improving the experience of essential husbandry procedures for more than three million lambs.
Given the size of the Australian and New Zealand sheep flock and changing consumer market expectations, we need to build on this number. Our most recent challenge has been securing wider distribution channels for NumOcaine, so that farmers can access it more easily. We’re currently in the process of having NumOcaine rescheduled to S5, meaning it can be sold over the counter in rural stores in 2023.
We innovators are an optimistic breed, but I’m being very genuine when I say that the outlook’s looking bright for Numnuts and presents an opportunity for resellers to be involved in the solution for their customers.
*Robin Smith of Numnuts, is a Scottish design engineer whose father – a sheep vet, developed the first vaccine for Barber’s Pole worm, called Barberbax. Mr Smith is now based in Queensland and is a director of of Numnuts.
