HOW CATTLE EAT

Wairarapa Times-Age, 5 November 1940, Page 9

HOW CATTLE EAT

SOME INTERESTING POINTS. The various farm animals are each furnished with differently formed organs' by which food is grasped, conducted into the mouth, and then masticated. By such provisions many animals of different kinds originally were enabled to live in the same pastures or feeding territories. Were all to feed exactly the same way sustenance would soon become exhausted. Do all take their feed alike? What are the differences, if any? Are all simply equipped with teeth? Do all use the lips and tongue in like manner? Is the lining of the mouth in identical? Note that the cow has somewhat thick, immobile lips, whereas the sheep, which is also a ruminant animal, has very mobile lips and that the upper one is cleft. The cleft lip enables the sheep to get its teeth right down on the surface to nibble the shortest, grass. The cow does not use her lips to any great extent in feeding, as does the horse. She grasps tags of grass \Vith her tongue, draws them into her mouth, jerks them off and chews them slightly, for they later nave to be brought up and rechewed. The cow has eight incisor teeth, in the lower jaw only, whereas the horse has six above and below. In the cow and sheep the upper row of incisors is absent but instead there is a pad or cushion of gristle tissue against which the lower incisors hold the grass while it is being torn off. The incisors of the cow normally are somewhat loose and they are directly forward or almost horizontally placed in the mouth. Were this not the case they would cut the dental pad above. Not aware that the cow’s incisors normally are loose, many an owner has on examination erroneously concluded that a diseased condition is present.

The cow's tongue is very rough and so are the cheeks. On the contrary, the cheeks and tongue of the horse are smooth. Studding the cow’s cheeks are long projections of papillae, and the tongue and front parts of the hard palate are fitted with saw-like projections. These are parts of the equipment possessed by cows to make perfect mastication possible. Looking further into the cow’s mouth it will be noted that the soft palate does not hang down and prevent breathing through the mouth as is the case in the horse.

Note, also, the cartilaginous ring around the snout of the pig, and understand too that the snout contains a special bone not present in other animals. These are the provisions for rooting to obtain food from under the surface of the ground. And watch how animals chew. The dog quickly cuts meat to pieces and gulps it down. The horse chews feed slowly and very thoroughly in scissors-like fashion and largely by lateral action. The cow masticates by longitudinal, transverse, and vertical motions.