Cattle Injuries Caused by Ingesting Foreign Objects

FOR SOME UNKNOWN REASON, cattle have a tendency to chew and swallow foreign objects. Amon^ those which have been found in their stomachs are pieces of baling wire and barbed wire, bristles from wire brushes, hairpins, hatpins, knitting needles, pocketknives, different kinds of nails including horseshoe and roofing nails, staples, and scraps of various kinds of metals with sharp ends or cutting edges (fig. 1). Besides such objects as these, which are capable of causing considerable damage, other things which probably cause little injury have also been found in bovine stomachs, such as coins, metal tags and badges, watch chains, parts of watches, keys and key chains, buttons, beads, rings, charms, and necklaces. On reaching the first stomach or rumen—more commonly called the paunch—an occasional foreign body may pierce the stomach wall. In most cases, however, the object passes on to the second stomach, or reticulum, from which it may penetrate the surrounding or related tissues (fig. 2). After penetrating the wall of the reticulum, a pointed object may go in one of several directions. In rare cases such an object has been known to work its way through to the external surface of the body. Occasionally it passes toward the liver, causing injury to that organ. The most frequent direction, however, is frontward, toward the heart. This is thought to be due in part to the breathing and chest action,