What are Cow Magnets?
Cow magnets are popular with dairy farmers and veterinarians to help prevent Hardware Disease in cattle. While grazing, cows eat everything from grass and dirt to nails, staples and bits of bailing wire (referred to as tramp iron). Tramp iron tends to lodge in the honeycombed walls of the reticulum, threatening the surrounding vital organs and causing irritation and inflammation, known as Hardware Disease. The cow loses her appetite and decreases milk output (dairy cows), or her ability to gain weight (feeder stock). Cow magnets help prevent this disease by attracting stray metal from the folds and crevices of the rumen and reticulum. One magnet works for the life of the cow!
What is hardware disease?
Hardware disease is the common term for bovine traumatic reticuloperitonitis. Huh? Cows don’t use their lips to discriminate between materials when they are eating. As they are eating they may also pick up small nails, pieces of wire or other metal and sharp objects. Since metal is heavy, it drops in the first compartment of stomach, called the reticulum. Magnets are also heavy and will stay in that first compartment for life hopefully picking up any dangerous peices of metal and protecting the cow from harm.
We give our cows magnets to prevent the disease or treat it if hardware is suspected.
Cattle commonly swallow foreign objects, because they do not use their lips to discriminate between materials and they do not completely chew their feed before swallowing. Sharp metallic objects, such as nails or wire, are the common initiators of hardware disease. The object travels into the rumen and is then pushed into the reticulum along with the rest of the feed. In some cases, contractions of the reticulum can push the object through part of the reticulum wall into the peritoneal cavity, where it causes severe inflammation. In rare cases, the metal object penetrates the entire wall of the reticulum and can pierce the heart sac, causing pericarditis. Compression by the uterus in late pregnancy, straining during parturition and mounting during estrus can increase the likelihood of the object penetrating the abdominal wall or the heart sac.
- Take the magnet insert it into the applicator
- Restraining the cows head and grab the nose, than pull out the tank, you will see at the back of the tongue is a foul.
- Than take the applicator into the mouth.
