LECTURE VII. 



JUDGING FAT CATTLE. 



Fat cattle are intended to furnish food for man. The 

 consumer desires tender flesh; the butcher seeks to supply 

 the needs of consumers, and chooses animals for slaughter 

 which will nearest fulfill their needs. The producer is guided, 

 therefore, by the demands of the consumer, made known 

 through the butcher. 



To correctly understand the judging of fat cattle it is 

 necessary to understand the skeleton of an ox and the rela- 

 tion of the muscular parts to the same. 



Stripped of all coverings of skin, flesh, and membranes, 

 the skeleton of the ox appears to consist not attempting to 

 describe it with technical accuracy of a mass of large bones, 

 which shape the head, a vertebral column consisting of many 

 separate bones (vertebra), a bony box formed by the ribs, 

 and known as the thorax, and the fore and hind limbs. 



The vertebral column supports the head and thorax, and 

 in turn is supported by the limbs. From the upper side of 

 the vertebra column a number of bones of varying length 

 project upward. These are known as the spinous processes, 

 and it is to these that many of the muscles of the body are 

 attached. The large space enclosed by the ribs contains the 

 vital organs of the body, and it is readily seen that the size 

 of this body cavity, or space for the vital organs, is depend- 

 ent upon the degree of spring, and depth, of the ribs. Large, 

 vigorous vital organs are desired in all animals, and hence 

 generous size of this body cavity is sought for. A point 

 deserving special notice is the fact that the bones are pro- 

 portional in all parts of the body. So true is this, that it is 

 possible to determine, by measuring any one bone of the 

 body, the size and length of all the others. If the bones 

 of the legs, or of the head, are large and coarse, all the 

 bones of the body are the same. This explains the objec- 

 tion butchers have to an animal coarse in the head or limbs. 



