Professor Vince Molony has taught and researched animal pain for several decades ! He is internationally renowned and has, through his work, developed alternative and always novel products and methods in an effort to reduce pain. He championed the needless injector for safer anaesthetic application, extra tight rubber rings and the use of standard rubber rings with a burdizzo clamped across the whole scrotum, and known as the combination method. However the ClipFitter concept is what he calls the culmination of his 35 years; he believes, and now proven with science, that it provides the best possible and most practical system of pain relief for lambs. Designed primarily of older lambs, and for the sake of hill farmers who through necessity break the rules. Most national and international husbandry standards reference Molony’s work He worked often with Joyce Kent who has also published many papers in her own right.
ClipFitter, once known as ClampEasy, is completely his concept and he has patents granted now across the world. Professor Molony’s Clip crushes across the whole scrotum or tail and is left on the animal to complete the removal of the required ‘appendage’.
The first official trial of these new Molony Clamps was conducted by the Scottish Rural University (formerly SAC) in Edinburgh, under UK Home Office rules, with excellent results for the older tested lambs. The 2022 SRUC Trial results are soon to be revealed but show excellent results for young (<7 days) lambs too and a vast improvement over best practice for older lambs.
