Surgery for the cattle practitioner

Nose ring torn out--nasolabioplastic operation

Abstract

Despite increasing knowledge of the behaviour of our farm livestock, incidents of bulls tearing out their nose ring occur from time to time. Standards of carefulness and vigilance have obviously not increased to the same extent as the level of ethological knowledge. After the event it is not always easy to establish exactly how the rupture of the muzzle happened. In some cases the nose ring might suddenly have got hooked on an awkwardly protruding solid object without anybody noticing, causing the animal to pull at the ring in panic in an attempt to rid itself as quickly as possible of this annoying obstacle. It should be borne in mind that bovines satisfy their curiosity by tactile, olfactory and gustatory means, i.e. with muzzle, nose and tongue, which they are in the habit of “sticking into” anything new and strange.