General Anaesthesia in Cattle

General anaesthesia is the controlled and reversible loss of consciousness, which is helpful in ruminants for many surgical procedures that warrant effective control of pain and movement. General anaesthesia is indicated when the demands of technical and anatomical aspects of surgical procedure exceed the capabilities of sedative drugs and local analgesia. Moreover, the patient co-operation and systemic analgesia are generally greater with general anaesthesia compared to local analgesia. The advances in large animal anaesthesia procedures are required to be available to ruminants essentially because of the considerable cost of the high producing dairy cattle and owner’s sentimental attachment with the animals in countries like India.