Habits Of Cattle Research Articles

Verbal vocabulary in Mongolian languages related to cattle breeding

The article examines the verbal vocabulary of the Mongolian languages related to cattle breeding. Mongolian-speaking peoples traditionally consider themselves nomadic pastoralists. In this regard, a whole layer of pastoral vocabulary has been formed in the Mongolian languages, which reflects the most diverse names associated with the economic use of livestock. The purpose of the article is to analyze the pastoral vocabulary of the Mongolian languages and determine the similarities and differences of terms in Khalkha-Mongolian, Buryat, Oirat and Kalmyk languages. The material of the written Mongolian language and the Turkic languages was used for comparative analysis. The data from various dictionaries of the Mongolian languages served as the material for the study. The analysis made it possible to identify the verbal vocabulary common to all languages and specific terms characteristic of individual languages. The material revealed lexemes with the meaning of actions reflecting the behavior, habits of cattle, various sounds made by cattle, as well as terms related to calving a cow, its milk yield. Most of the meanings of the represented lexemes in the Mongolian closely related languages coincide. But there are separate lexemes that are characterized by the presence or absence in a particular Mongolian language. As a result of the development of Mongolian languages, in some of them, lexemes under the influence of other languages have become obsolete and have ceased to be used in modern speech. In others, they have been preserved and continue to be used at the present time. This is due to the peculiarities of the development of languages, their cultural and historical conditions, and language contacts. The results of this study can contribute to further research of lexical units in comparative historical coverage.

The Cow in Cheshire

AS an important dairying county it is not surprising that Cheshire should have quite a developed folklore of cows, and a good number of proverbial sayings about them, for men usually draw for their proverbs on what is familiar and important in their daily lives. So through the centuries Cheshire people used such picturesque turns of phrase as 'As much use as a cow has for side pockets', 'As surly as a cow's husband', 'You'll have to wait till the cows come up for it' (used perhaps by the debtor who doesn't intend to pay). The girl who returned home with an addition to the family 'came home like the parson's cow with a cauf at her foot', and the person who kept asking questions was put off with 'The old brown cow laid an egg'. 'To lick one's caufover again' was to do work a second time, and no doubt it was the labour involved in caring for a herd which gave rise to the saying, 'Who would keep a cow when he can have a pottle of milk for a penny?' The habits of cattle were used to foretell the weather, for it was always believed that when cows lay down together in the morning it was a sure sign of rain. The legend that the cows fall on their knees in their stalls at midnight on Christmas Eve, in memory of the stable at Bethlehem, is fairly widespread through the country as a whole (though purists insist that this of course applies to Old Christmas Eve). Perhaps not every place had the pleasant custom observed at Ashton Hayes on the fringe of Delamere Forest, where each cow was given a sheaf of corn on Christmas Eve-no doubt much appreciated by the recipient. On the subject of cows' fodder, the Cheshire poet, Rowland EgertonWarburton, remarked,

Comparative Food Habits of Deer and Three Classes of Livestock

To observe forage competition between deer and livestock, the forage selections of a tame deer (Odocoileus virginianus), a goat, a sheep, and a cow were observed under four range conditions, using both stocked and unstocked experimental pastures, on the Kerr Wildlife Management Area in the Edwards Plateau region of Texas in 1959. The animals were trained in 2 months of preliminary testing. The technique employed consisted of recording the number of bites taken of each plant species by each animal during a 45-minute grazing period in each pasture each week for 1 year. Results indicated moderate to heavy competition for browse and mast between the deer and goat in all pastures during all seasons, and between the deer and all three classes of livestock in the winter. Browse and mast comprised over 50 percent of the deer's diet, except in the spring and summer, and over 50 percent of the goat's diet in all seasons. Following a decrease in available browse, sheep become competitive with deer for forbs. Forbs formed an average of 68 percent of the deer's diet and 65 percent of the sheep's diet in the ungrazed control pasture in the summer; the animals generally were grazing the same species. The added factors of bearing and nursing fawns, and growing antlers, contribute to the nutritional stresses on deer in the summer, the period when extensive die-offs of deer most frequently occur in the Edwards Plateau region. Competition for grass between deer and livestock probably is important only when grass is in a succulent stage in the spring and no other forage is available in quantity. Continuous grazing by animals tends to remove the most palatable species and concentrates competition on fewer, less palatable ones. Observations from the numerous replications of feeding times and places allow the conclusion that this technique provides a reliable index to preferred foods and staple foods. In the Edwards Plateau region of Texas, most of the rangelands are grazed by two or more classes of livestock along with deer. Research on the Kerr Wildlife Management Area, near Hunt, Texas, indicates that deer when managed and harvested properly can provide economic returns comparable to those from domestic livestock. But a study of the economic feasibility of management for livestock and deer in combination revealed the need for more exact knowledge of their competition for forage. To provide such information, a study of the food habits of cattle, sheep, goats, and deer was initiated in May, 1959, and concluded in May, 1960. The Kerr Wildlife Management Area is a research facility of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department located in Kerr County in the eastern portion of the Edwards Plateau. This region, encompassing some 26,000 square miles of central Texas, probably is unique in its combined productivity of deer and livestock in high densities (Hahn 1945, Taylor and Hahn 1947). Previous studies of its vegetation in relation to deer and livestock were reported by Buechner (1944), Taylor and Beuchner (1943), and Whisenhunt (1949). On the Kerr Area, particularly the pastures involved in this study, the prominent vegetal expression is a savannah of live oak, in which Ashe juniper (Juniperus ashei) and shin oak are conspicuous. Part of the Kerr Wildlife Management Area contains 10, 96-acre deer-proof pastures which are used for a long-term study of the influence of combined sheep, goat, and cattle grazing rates on deer production. Each species of animal obviously has a different influence on the welfare of the others and on the forage resource in general, but the experimental design had revealed only the gross influence of combinations of animals. Performances of deer in experimental pas-

The Grazing Habits of Beef Cattle

The paper as presented consisted of extracts from “Grazing management practices and their relationship to the behaviour and grazing habits of cattle ”, by D. B. Johnstone-Wallace and Keith Kennedy, Department of Agrostology, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, which appears in the Journal of Agricultural Science, Vol. 34, Part 4, October 1944. The following excerpts are published by permission of the editors of the Journal of Agricultural Science. As a result of experiments and observations made on the field at Cornell University between 1931 and 1939, a more distinct study of grazing management problems was commenced, the results of which to date are discussed in this paper.