The primary goal of the present study was to describe in detail the ethological (behavioural elements and postures), physiological (cortisol levels) and clinical (scrotal palpation) pain responses of bull calves castrated during the first week of life using the Burdizzo technique with and without local anaesthesia. The secondary goal was to investigate the relationship of the stress and pain caused by the administration of local anaesthesia with the pain reduction it afforded during and after the procedure. For these purposes, the day before and the first 7.5 h after castration were evaluated. This time slot was selected taking in account the average peak pain period stated in previous publications (Fisher etal., 1996; Stafford et al., 2002; Thu ¨er et al., 2007) as well as the 4 h effectiveness of Bupivacain