The first time I saw the image of a cow with a hole in its side, I thought it was someone's joke. What someone did with the help of Photoshop from a cow is a kind of rubber toy.
But, as it turned out, cows with rubber valves in the side do exist. Moreover, such cases are not unique, but there are entire farms with herds of such operated animals. Honestly, it looks very eerie.
It turns out that this is not a whim of the farmers who decided to make a kind of piercing their cows and a new word in veterinary medicine.
The matter is that the stomach at the cow is the most complicated multilevel mechanism on digesting of a considerable quantity of a cellulose. In its essence, this is a whole mini-factory, in which, thanks to a special micro flora, even cellulose is processed into useful substances. Therefore, the cow can safely eat, for example, hay.
However, the microflora of the digestive tract of the cow is content with sensitivity, and it can easily be disturbed by an unbalanced diet. For example, when the burr after a long feeding with hay abruptly switches to feeding with young clover, beet or silage, then problems begin to arise. Microorganisms do not have time to rebuild to digest new food, and the cow suffers from an overabundance in the rumen (one of the stomach sections). If you do not help the animal in time, it can even die from suffocation.
Earlier in such cases, it was customary to pierce the belly of a cow in a certain place to release excess gases. This was an urgent and rather painful procedure since it was provided with a noticeable delay. After all, the owners of animals usually until the last attempted to delay the call to the veterinarian, hoping that the cattle in itself will be better. Now they are practicing the introduction of a special valve, which can be opened at the right time. Through the valve, you can not only remove excess gases. But also to remove a part of the food received there, so as not to provoke further multiplication of microorganisms.
In addition, thanks to such an opening, it is now possible to control the concentration of bacteria and unicellular animals in the stomach of the cow in a timely manner and feed it with those foods that the cow can digest with maximum benefit for itself.
The hole in the side looks unlikely, but it does not bother the animal at all. At least so assure veterinarians conducting such operations. Cows behave as if nothing had happened, and, it seems, do not even realize that they have implanted a valve on their side.
However, some animal advocates oppose this treatment technology. After all, some farmers begin to install such valves "for the future" when the cow is still all right and the scar did not bother her.
In addition, the activists are against specialized farms, where they study the effect of various new feeds on the microflora of the cow's stomach. There, all the cows have also inserted a valve in the scar, so that it's easier to make tests and analyzes. In addition, excursions are organized here, including children's ones, where visitors are shown the process of work. Excursionists can themselves extract the undigested food from the stomach from the cow, or that occurs inside the cicatrix. Animal rights advocates consider this behavior unacceptable.
The piquancy of the situation is also added by the protests of vegetarians, who feel sorry for cows with holes in their sides on farms investigating feeds. The irony is that scientists also investigate the principle of the work of microorganisms in the gastric tract of the cow. And the results of their research can lead to the synthesis of new products that will have all the beneficial substances for humans but will be completely vegetarian.
In general, it is rather difficult to say unequivocally whether to equip cows with such holes. And what do you think about this? Discuss this with your friends, having previously shared with them a link to this entry.