Frequently Asked Questions
Here are some of the questions we’ve been asked most over the past 8 years
Numnuts Basics
Numnuts is the world’s first rubber ring applicator with a pain relief delivery mechanism.
The system is comprised of 2 key elements that work together to deliver targeted pain relief during tail docking and castration:
- The Numnuts ring applicator tool
- The local anaesthetic, called NumOcaine®
Numnuts combines the traditional with the innovative. Our new ergonomic tool applies a standard rubber ring to cut off blood supply, while at the same time, adding the functionality of targeted pain relief via a novel multi-stage injection mechanism.
Numnuts has been validated in trials by CSIRO measuring the pain behaviours of lambs during these procedures.
Yes.
We have a number of case studies and user reviews that you can have a look at. You can also see what people are saying about Numnuts on social media.
For Case Studies: click here
For User Reviews: click here
For Social Media: click here
Buying Numnuts
All Numnuts® products, including NumOcaine® are available through vets and rural retailers.
Rest of World:
Numnuts is not currently available outside of Australia and New Zealand.
Every country regulates the use of anaesthetic differently, and getting approval for Numnuts and NumOcaine must be done separately for each individual country. This is a very involved and time-consuming process and as such we are only able to focus on one country at a time, with the UK being the next country targeted for launch.
There are two components to Numnuts that you will need:
- The ring applicator tool
- The local anaesthetic, called NumOcaine®
The ring applicator tool will last for many seasons.
The local anaesthetic comes in an injector cartridge, called a Quick Change Cartridge (QCC), that locks on top of the ring applicator tool, ensuring there is a sterile bottle of pain relief drug ready to use in each new cartridge. The QCC is replaced every 65 injections.
In Australia, NumOcaine® has been approved by the AVPMA as an S5 drug, allowing sales to be made safely over the counter.
Regulations controlling the supply of the NumOcaine® injector module will vary between countries. Further details will be provided on this website when country-specific details become available.
Using Numnuts
Yes.
Numnuts has been especially developed for both castration and tail docking of lambs.
Yes.
Marking lambs usually involves both tail docking and castration, and Numnuts has been especially developed to do both. With Numnuts you can:
- Tail docking: male and female lambs
- Castrating: male lambs
Yes.
The Numnuts system has been designed to utilise traditional rubber rings — a bloodless and highly effective, farmer-friendly method for castration and tail docking lambs that is used in many countries.
No.
Numnuts has been designed for use on lambs held in the type of marking cradle commonly used in Australia and New Zealand, however Numnuts can also be used without a lamb marking cradle.
When lambs more than 7 days of age are marked, a cradle improves the ease with which lambs are held for marking. When lamb marking is carried out at 2-8 weeks of age an animal handling system like a lamb marking cradle is recommended.
A trained operator can apply Numnuts in 2-3 seconds.
We believe the marginal additional time taken to push the local anaesthetic injection plunger on the Numnuts device is offset by the improved ergonomics and reduced RSI associated with using our unique innovative tool for applying rings to the tail and scrotum at marking.
Numnuts engineers worked alongside veterinarians, stockpersons, shepherds and farmers to ensure that Numnuts is safe, fast and practical to use by animal handlers familiar with marking lambs.
Regulations controlling marking practices varies between countries. In Australia, animal husbandry practice guidelines recommend marking lambs between 2 to 8 weeks of age, whereas government regulations indicate that marking should, where possible, occur between 2 and 12 weeks of age. Numnuts is designed to be used on lambs up to 12 weeks of age.
Numnuts® is designed for marking lambs. NumOcaine® as a S5 is not approved for use on cattle.
No efficacy data currently exists for the use of Numnuts in calves. A Numnuts device for calves is in future development pipeline.
NumOcaine & Pain Relief
Numnuts substantially reduces the pain lambs experience when they are marked, however Numnuts does not alleviate all the pain a lamb experiences during castration and tail docking.
For a lamb, marking may be similar to the human experience of visiting a dentist. For a human, having a filling or a tooth extraction after an injection of local anaesthetic is usually not without some pain. Similarly at present, pain relief provide by Numnuts does not abolish all the pain associated with marking.
Numnuts has been developed in collaboration with veterinarians and animal behavioural scientists at two world leading animal health and animal welfare research organisations; Moredun Research Institute and CSIRO with the goal of reducing the pain experienced by lambs at marking.
NumOcaine is extremely quick acting and takes effect in
1 – 5 minutes after injection.
Research shows that marked animals experience acute ischemic pain, which is most severe 15 – 45 minutes after ring application.
NumOcaine provides fast acting pain relief in the first 45 minutes, when lambs experience this acute pain caused by the loss of blood flow from ring application.
There are 65 doses per bottle.
NumOcaine can be stored at room temperature and unopened bottles have a 2 year batch life, from the date of manufacture.
Once opened, bottles must be used within 7 days.
For long-term storage, please keep your NumOcaine in a closed box to avoid dirt and dust getting into the QCC on the top of the bottle, where it connects to the Numnuts device.
NumOcaine® is injected directly where the ring is applied to the tail and scrotum. The marking ring disrupts blood flow to the tail and testicles, and the pain of ring castration and ring tail docking commences at these sites. Pain develops around 2 – 5 minutes after band application from loss of oxygen supply, and the acute pain associated with the procedure lasts 60-90 minutes. LA reduces the conduction of pain by nerves for a similar time frame.
Local anaesthetics are therefore an excellent choice for reducing the acute pain when lambs are marked with a rubber ring.
In contrast, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) have a slower onset than local anaesthetics. They act by a different pathway to reduce the production of chemicals that provoke tissue inflammation and pain, called prostaglandins. NSAIDs are a good choice for reducing dull and chronic pain, once the immediate and most intense phases of pain have passed.
The withholding period for NumOcaine® in Australia is 0 days.
We have shown a significant improvement in the time it takes lambs to find their mothers and start suckling after having had NumOcaine administered with rubber ring. Numerous farmers have also reported that Numnuts lambs muster better, and can be herded back to the paddocks/ fields faster, with less dog intervention and less misadventure.
Most experts in this field feel it is unlikely that benefits from pain management at lamb marking will ever be measurable in terms of improved end production or profitability. Whatever temporary productivity setback a lamb might suffer without pain relief will have been compensated for by the time it (or its wool) goes to market. That compensation is likely to come at the cost of poorer feed conversion, but, under extensive production conditions, we simply do not have the instruments with which to measure this accurately.
The profitability the farmer will see is the knowledge that they are doing the right thing for their animals during necessary husbandry procedures, while sustaining continued access to a sheep-meat-eating and wool-producing consumer market that is showing an increased interest in the welfare of the animals that produce the meat and wool that they consume.
Yes.
See this article and corresponding case study where NumOcaine has been used to improve lamb welfare on an Australian Certified Organic sheep station.
Lamb Marking
Tail docking reduces soiling of wool with urine and faeces. This reduces the risk of sheep contracting the painful, and potentially fatal, disease ‘fly-strike’, and reduces the risk of carcass contamination in the abattoir.
Castration reduces fighting between males, improves meat and wool quality, and enables the farmer to selectively breed sheep for beneficial traits by use of superior sires.
This article provides information on tail length best practice guidelines:
Becoming a Stockist
If you are a registered vet in Australia and would like to become a NumOcaine supplier, please order directly from your veterinary wholesaler.
Numnuts and NumOcaine are now available in Australia.
Numnuts devices and spare parts can be bought directly from our online store.
NumOcaine is an S4 drug and must be bought from a registered vet. Please speak to your usual vet to arrange your NumOcaine supply, or get in touch with us for advice.
We hope to make the Numnuts system available in the UK and NZ in 2020. We are actively seeking UK Vet practices who wish to partner.
Yes.
Marking lambs usually involves both tail docking and castration. Numnuts has been especially developed for the combined procedure of docking the tail of male and female lambs as well as castrating male lambs with rubber ring.
Numnuts is available on a ‘cost per procedure basis’ and is competitively priced against current pain relief products.
If you are based in Australia, you can find our how much it will cost you by trying our cost estimator tool.
There are two components to Numnuts: the ring applicator tool and the local anaesthetic, called NumOcaine®.
The ring applicator tool will last for many seasons.
The local anaesthetic comes in an injector cartridge, called a Quick Change Cartridge (QCC), that locks on top of the ring applicator tool, and is replaced every 65 shots. This procedure ensures there is a sterile bottle of pain relief drug ready to use in each new cartridge.
The packaging has been carefully designed for operator convenience, and for operator and lamb safety. Using a new needle with every other injector cartridge helps minimise the risk of infection to the lamb, and ensures that the needle remains sharp. This innovation is more humane than the common practice of using a single needle for 100s of animal injections, for instance during vaccination and some worm treatments.
In Australia, NumOcaine® is classified as an S4 drug and must be bought from a registered veterinarian. Regulations controlling the supply of the NumOcaine® injector module will vary between countries. Further details will be provided on this website when country-specific details become available.
Yes. The Numnuts system has been designed to utilise traditional rubber rings — a bloodless and highly effective, farmer-friendly method for castration and tail docking lambs that is used in many countries.
When lambs more than 7 days of age are marked, a cradle improves the ease with which lambs are held for marking. When lamb marking is carried out at 2-8 weeks of age an animal handling system like a lamb marking cradle is recommended.
A trained operator can apply Numnuts in 2-3 seconds.
We believe the marginal additional time taken to push the local anaesthetic injection plunger on the Numnuts device is offset by the improved ergonomics and reduced RSI associated with using our unique innovative tool for applying rings to the tail and scrotum at marking.
Numnuts engineers worked alongside veterinarians, stockpersons, shepherds and farmers to ensure that Numnuts is safe, fast and practical to use by animal handlers familiar with marking lambs.
For a lamb, marking may be similar to the human experience of visiting a dentist. For a human, having a filling or a tooth extraction after an injection of local anaesthetic is usually not without some pain. Similarly at present, pain relief provide by Numnuts does not abolish all the pain associated with marking.
Numnuts has been developed in collaboration with veterinarians and animal behavioural scientists at two world leading animal health and animal welfare research organisations; Moredun Research Institute and CSIRO with the goal of reducing the pain experienced by lambs at marking.
NumOcaine® is injected directly where the ring is applied to the tail and scrotum. The marking ring disrupts blood flow to the tail and testicles, and the pain of ring castration and ring tail docking commences at these sites. Pain develops around 2 – 5 minutes after band application from loss of oxygen supply, and the acute pain associated with the procedure lasts 60-90 minutes. LA reduces the conduction of pain by nerves for a similar time frame.
Local anaesthetics are therefore an excellent choice for reducing the acute pain when lambs are marked with a rubber ring.
In contrast, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) have a slower onset than local anaesthetics. They act by a different pathway to reduce the production of chemicals that provoke tissue inflammation and pain, called prostaglandins. NSAIDs are a good choice for reducing dull and chronic pain, once the immediate and most intense phases of pain have passed.
We have shown a significant improvement in the time it takes lambs to find their mothers and start suckling after having had NumOcaine administered with rubber ring. Numerous farmers have also reported that Numnuts lambs muster better, and can be herded back to the paddocks/ fields faster, with less dog intervention and less misadventure.
Most experts in this field feel it is unlikely that benefits from pain management at lamb marking will ever be measurable in terms of improved end production or profitability. Whatever temporary productivity setback a lamb might suffer without pain relief will have been compensated for by the time it (or its wool) goes to market. That compensation is likely to come at the cost of poorer feed conversion, but, under extensive production conditions, we simply do not have the instruments with which to measure this accurately.
The profitability the farmer will see is the knowledge that they are doing the right thing for their animals during necessary husbandry procedures, while sustaining continued access to a sheep-meat-eating and wool-producing consumer market that is showing an increased interest in the welfare of the animals that produce the meat and wool that they consume.
Regulations controlling marking practices varies between countries. In Australia, animal husbandry practice guidelines recommend marking lambs between 2 to 8 weeks of age, whereas government regulations indicate that marking should, where possible, occur between 2 and 12 weeks of age. Numnuts is designed to be used on lambs up to 12 weeks of age.
Tail docking reduces soiling of wool with urine and faeces. This reduces the risk of sheep contracting the painful, and potentially fatal, disease ‘fly-strike’, and reduces the risk of carcass contamination in the abattoir.
Castration reduces fighting between males, improves meat and wool quality, and enables the farmer to selectively breed sheep for beneficial traits by use of superior sires.
This article provides information on tail length best practice guidelines:
Numnuts is designed for marking lambs. NumOcaine is approved for calves – however they will likely need more than one dose. No efficacy data currently exists. A future Numnuts device for calves is in future development pipeline.
If you are interested in being involved in using Numnuts on your calves please get in touch with us at [email protected].
Yes.
Lambs over 7 days old must be given a local anaesthetic prior to castration, which is exactly what Numnuts delivers.
However, lambs more than 3 months old may only be castrated by a vet (Veterinary Surgeons Act, 1966)
Numnuts and NumOcaine are now available in Australia.
Numnuts devices and spare parts can be bought directly from our online store.
NumOcaine is an S4 drug and must be bought from a registered vet. Please speak to your usual vet to arrange your NumOcaine supply, or get in touch with us for advice.
We hope to make the Numnuts system available in the UK and NZ in 2020. We are actively seeking UK Vet practices who wish to partner.
Yes.
Marking lambs usually involves both tail docking and castration. Numnuts has been especially developed for the combined procedure of docking the tail of male and female lambs as well as castrating male lambs with rubber ring.
Numnuts is available on a ‘cost per procedure basis’ and is competitively priced against current pain relief products.
If you are based in Australia, you can find our how much it will cost you by trying our cost estimator tool.
There are two components to Numnuts: the ring applicator tool and the local anaesthetic, called NumOcaine®.
The ring applicator tool will last for many seasons.
The local anaesthetic comes in an injector cartridge, called a Quick Change Cartridge (QCC), that locks on top of the ring applicator tool, and is replaced every 65 shots. This procedure ensures there is a sterile bottle of pain relief drug ready to use in each new cartridge.
The packaging has been carefully designed for operator convenience, and for operator and lamb safety. Using a new needle with every other injector cartridge helps minimise the risk of infection to the lamb, and ensures that the needle remains sharp. This innovation is more humane than the common practice of using a single needle for 100s of animal injections, for instance during vaccination and some worm treatments.
In Australia, NumOcaine® is classified as an S4 drug and must be bought from a registered veterinarian. Regulations controlling the supply of the NumOcaine® injector module will vary between countries. Further details will be provided on this website when country-specific details become available.
Yes. The Numnuts system has been designed to utilise traditional rubber rings — a bloodless and highly effective, farmer-friendly method for castration and tail docking lambs that is used in many countries.
When lambs more than 7 days of age are marked, a cradle improves the ease with which lambs are held for marking. When lamb marking is carried out at 2-8 weeks of age an animal handling system like a lamb marking cradle is recommended.
A trained operator can apply Numnuts in 2-3 seconds.
We believe the marginal additional time taken to push the local anaesthetic injection plunger on the Numnuts device is offset by the improved ergonomics and reduced RSI associated with using our unique innovative tool for applying rings to the tail and scrotum at marking.
Numnuts engineers worked alongside veterinarians, stockpersons, shepherds and farmers to ensure that Numnuts is safe, fast and practical to use by animal handlers familiar with marking lambs.
For a lamb, marking may be similar to the human experience of visiting a dentist. For a human, having a filling or a tooth extraction after an injection of local anaesthetic is usually not without some pain. Similarly at present, pain relief provide by Numnuts does not abolish all the pain associated with marking.
Numnuts has been developed in collaboration with veterinarians and animal behavioural scientists at two world leading animal health and animal welfare research organisations; Moredun Research Institute and CSIRO with the goal of reducing the pain experienced by lambs at marking.
NumOcaine® is injected directly where the ring is applied to the tail and scrotum. The marking ring disrupts blood flow to the tail and testicles, and the pain of ring castration and ring tail docking commences at these sites. Pain develops around 2 – 5 minutes after band application from loss of oxygen supply, and the acute pain associated with the procedure lasts 60-90 minutes. LA reduces the conduction of pain by nerves for a similar time frame.
Local anaesthetics are therefore an excellent choice for reducing the acute pain when lambs are marked with a rubber ring.
In contrast, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) have a slower onset than local anaesthetics. They act by a different pathway to reduce the production of chemicals that provoke tissue inflammation and pain, called prostaglandins. NSAIDs are a good choice for reducing dull and chronic pain, once the immediate and most intense phases of pain have passed.
We have shown a significant improvement in the time it takes lambs to find their mothers and start suckling after having had NumOcaine administered with rubber ring. Numerous farmers have also reported that Numnuts lambs muster better, and can be herded back to the paddocks/ fields faster, with less dog intervention and less misadventure.
Most experts in this field feel it is unlikely that benefits from pain management at lamb marking will ever be measurable in terms of improved end production or profitability. Whatever temporary productivity setback a lamb might suffer without pain relief will have been compensated for by the time it (or its wool) goes to market. That compensation is likely to come at the cost of poorer feed conversion, but, under extensive production conditions, we simply do not have the instruments with which to measure this accurately.
The profitability the farmer will see is the knowledge that they are doing the right thing for their animals during necessary husbandry procedures, while sustaining continued access to a sheep-meat-eating and wool-producing consumer market that is showing an increased interest in the welfare of the animals that produce the meat and wool that they consume.
Regulations controlling marking practices varies between countries. In Australia, animal husbandry practice guidelines recommend marking lambs between 2 to 8 weeks of age, whereas government regulations indicate that marking should, where possible, occur between 2 and 12 weeks of age. Numnuts is designed to be used on lambs up to 12 weeks of age.
Tail docking reduces soiling of wool with urine and faeces. This reduces the risk of sheep contracting the painful, and potentially fatal, disease ‘fly-strike’, and reduces the risk of carcass contamination in the abattoir.
Castration reduces fighting between males, improves meat and wool quality, and enables the farmer to selectively breed sheep for beneficial traits by use of superior sires.
This article provides information on tail length best practice guidelines:
Numnuts is designed for marking lambs. NumOcaine is approved for calves – however they will likely need more than one dose. No efficacy data currently exists. A future Numnuts device for calves is in future development pipeline.
If you are interested in being involved in using Numnuts on your calves please get in touch with us at [email protected].
Yes.
Lambs over 7 days old must be given a local anaesthetic prior to castration, which is exactly what Numnuts delivers.
However, lambs more than 3 months old may only be castrated by a vet (Veterinary Surgeons Act, 1966)
Numnuts and NumOcaine are now available in Australia.
Numnuts devices and spare parts can be bought directly from our online store.
NumOcaine is an S4 drug and must be bought from a registered vet. Please speak to your usual vet to arrange your NumOcaine supply, or get in touch with us for advice.
We hope to make the Numnuts system available in the UK and NZ in 2020. We are actively seeking UK Vet practices who wish to partner.
Yes.
Marking lambs usually involves both tail docking and castration. Numnuts has been especially developed for the combined procedure of docking the tail of male and female lambs as well as castrating male lambs with rubber ring.
Numnuts is available on a ‘cost per procedure basis’ and is competitively priced against current pain relief products.
If you are based in Australia, you can find our how much it will cost you by trying our cost estimator tool.
There are two components to Numnuts: the ring applicator tool and the local anaesthetic, called NumOcaine®.
The ring applicator tool will last for many seasons.
The local anaesthetic comes in an injector cartridge, called a Quick Change Cartridge (QCC), that locks on top of the ring applicator tool, and is replaced every 65 shots. This procedure ensures there is a sterile bottle of pain relief drug ready to use in each new cartridge.
The packaging has been carefully designed for operator convenience, and for operator and lamb safety. Using a new needle with every other injector cartridge helps minimise the risk of infection to the lamb, and ensures that the needle remains sharp. This innovation is more humane than the common practice of using a single needle for 100s of animal injections, for instance during vaccination and some worm treatments.
In Australia, NumOcaine® is classified as an S4 drug and must be bought from a registered veterinarian. Regulations controlling the supply of the NumOcaine® injector module will vary between countries. Further details will be provided on this website when country-specific details become available.
Yes. The Numnuts system has been designed to utilise traditional rubber rings — a bloodless and highly effective, farmer-friendly method for castration and tail docking lambs that is used in many countries.
When lambs more than 7 days of age are marked, a cradle improves the ease with which lambs are held for marking. When lamb marking is carried out at 2-8 weeks of age an animal handling system like a lamb marking cradle is recommended.
A trained operator can apply Numnuts in 2-3 seconds.
We believe the marginal additional time taken to push the local anaesthetic injection plunger on the Numnuts device is offset by the improved ergonomics and reduced RSI associated with using our unique innovative tool for applying rings to the tail and scrotum at marking.
Numnuts engineers worked alongside veterinarians, stockpersons, shepherds and farmers to ensure that Numnuts is safe, fast and practical to use by animal handlers familiar with marking lambs.
For a lamb, marking may be similar to the human experience of visiting a dentist. For a human, having a filling or a tooth extraction after an injection of local anaesthetic is usually not without some pain. Similarly at present, pain relief provide by Numnuts does not abolish all the pain associated with marking.
Numnuts has been developed in collaboration with veterinarians and animal behavioural scientists at two world leading animal health and animal welfare research organisations; Moredun Research Institute and CSIRO with the goal of reducing the pain experienced by lambs at marking.
NumOcaine® is injected directly where the ring is applied to the tail and scrotum. The marking ring disrupts blood flow to the tail and testicles, and the pain of ring castration and ring tail docking commences at these sites. Pain develops around 2 – 5 minutes after band application from loss of oxygen supply, and the acute pain associated with the procedure lasts 60-90 minutes. LA reduces the conduction of pain by nerves for a similar time frame.
Local anaesthetics are therefore an excellent choice for reducing the acute pain when lambs are marked with a rubber ring.
In contrast, non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) have a slower onset than local anaesthetics. They act by a different pathway to reduce the production of chemicals that provoke tissue inflammation and pain, called prostaglandins. NSAIDs are a good choice for reducing dull and chronic pain, once the immediate and most intense phases of pain have passed.
We have shown a significant improvement in the time it takes lambs to find their mothers and start suckling after having had NumOcaine administered with rubber ring. Numerous farmers have also reported that Numnuts lambs muster better, and can be herded back to the paddocks/ fields faster, with less dog intervention and less misadventure.
Most experts in this field feel it is unlikely that benefits from pain management at lamb marking will ever be measurable in terms of improved end production or profitability. Whatever temporary productivity setback a lamb might suffer without pain relief will have been compensated for by the time it (or its wool) goes to market. That compensation is likely to come at the cost of poorer feed conversion, but, under extensive production conditions, we simply do not have the instruments with which to measure this accurately.
The profitability the farmer will see is the knowledge that they are doing the right thing for their animals during necessary husbandry procedures, while sustaining continued access to a sheep-meat-eating and wool-producing consumer market that is showing an increased interest in the welfare of the animals that produce the meat and wool that they consume.
Regulations controlling marking practices varies between countries. In Australia, animal husbandry practice guidelines recommend marking lambs between 2 to 8 weeks of age, whereas government regulations indicate that marking should, where possible, occur between 2 and 12 weeks of age. Numnuts is designed to be used on lambs up to 12 weeks of age.
Tail docking reduces soiling of wool with urine and faeces. This reduces the risk of sheep contracting the painful, and potentially fatal, disease ‘fly-strike’, and reduces the risk of carcass contamination in the abattoir.
Castration reduces fighting between males, improves meat and wool quality, and enables the farmer to selectively breed sheep for beneficial traits by use of superior sires.
This article provides information on tail length best practice guidelines:
Numnuts is designed for marking lambs. NumOcaine is approved for calves – however they will likely need more than one dose. No efficacy data currently exists. A future Numnuts device for calves is in future development pipeline.
If you are interested in being involved in using Numnuts on your calves please get in touch with us at [email protected].
Yes.
Lambs over 7 days old must be given a local anaesthetic prior to castration, which is exactly what Numnuts delivers.
However, lambs more than 3 months old may only be castrated by a vet (Veterinary Surgeons Act, 1966)
