GUIDE TO HEALTH

Waikato Times, Volume 124, Issue 20728, 11 February 1939, Page 27 (Supplement)

GUIDE TO HEALTH

ACT OF RUMINATION The act of rumination should be read as you read a thermometer, observing the regularity or otherwise ol‘ every phase of It and counting the number of strokes given to each of a succession of boluses, stales a writer in an Irish exchange. Regularity in the movements and a maximum number of cuts per bolus are always associated in a state of perfect health, while departure from health is increasingly indicated as the number of cuts observed decreases, and the the movements become hesitating and erratic. Calves begin to ruminate soon after they have access to long food, and have been known to do so before they are a fortnight old. Healthy cows spend 25 per cent of their time ruminating and the number of ruminating periods per day depends to some extent on the number of meals and the amount of disturbance to which they are subjected. Only by a regime of almost perfect quietude in the cowshed, gentleness in handling of the cows, and an almost entire absence of circumstances that by sight or hearing or sensation upset the natural complacency of the cows, can the maximum yield of milk be obtained. Perfect rumination is one of the essentials to this end and as indicating how very sensitive are the phenomena responsible for the process, one has only to make observations to see that the majority of milking cows cease ruminating when being milked by hand.