The balls may be spherical, elliptical, ovoid, or, when flattened by mutual compression, discoid.
Symptoms. Generally these balls cause no appreciable disturbance of the functions of the stomach. This is especially true of the large, old and smoothly encrusted masses. The museum of the N. Y. S. V. College contains specimens of 5½ inches in diameter, found after death in a fat heifer, which had always had good health and which was killed for beef. This is the usual history of such formations, they are not suspected during life, and are only found accidentally when the rumen is opened in the abattoir.
The smaller specimens, the size of a hen’s or goose’s egg, or a billiard ball, have produced severe suffering, with gulping, eructation, vomiting and tympany from obstruction of the demicanal or gullet, and such symptoms continued until the offending agents were rejected by the mouth. (Caillau, Leblanc, Prevost, Giron). Again they may block the passage from the first to the third stomach (Schauber, Feldamann, Adamovicz, Tyvaert, Mathieu).
In calves on milk they are especially injurious as beside the dangers of blocking the passages already referred to, the unencrusted hairs and straws irritate the mucous membranes and still worse, the putrid fermentations going on in their interstices, produce irritant and poisonous products, and disseminate the germs of similar fermentations in the fourth stomach and intestine. Here the symptoms are bloating, colics, impaired or irregular appetite, fœtid diarrhœa, fœtor of the breath and cutaneous exhalations, and rapidly progressive emaciation.
Diagnosis is too often impossible. Tympanies, diarrhœa, colics, etc., may lead to suspicion, but unless specimens of the smaller hair balls are rejected by the mouth or anus there can be no certainty of their presence. If arrested in the cervical portion of the gullet they may be pressed upward into the mouth by manipulations applied from without. The looped wire extractor may be used on any portion of the œsophagus. If lodged in the demicanal the passage of a probang will give prompt relief. If retained in the rumen and manifestly hurtful, rumenotomy is called for as soon as a diagnosis can be made.
FOREIGN BODIES IN THE RUMEN AND RETICULUM.
Common. Harmless or injurious. Perforating objects. Traumatisms of contiguous organs. Causes; hurried primary mastication, morbid appetite. Bodies found. Lesions; catarrh, perforations, congestions, ulcerations of mucosa, abscess, trauma of liver, spleen, diaphragm, abdominal and thoracic walls, lung, pleura, pericardium, heart. Symptoms; absent, or, indigestion, tympany, eructations, hepatic, respiratory or circulatory disorder, colics, local tenderness, crepitation, substernal exudate, costiveness, difficult urination or defecation, bloody fæces, nervous disorder. Treatment; Prevention; avoidance of causes, gravitation methods, incision.
These are so frequent that they can hardly be looked on as abnormal, but they must be accepted as pathological when they cause serious irritation or digestive disorder. This result is seen especially in the case of cutting or sharp pointed bodies, which beside wounding the walls of the rumen, show a marked tendency to advance to the heart and penetrate it, or to perforate the liver, diaphragm or abdominal walls and even to cause a fistula through which the ingesta escapes.
Causes. The common cause in cattle is the habit of swallowing, after one or two strokes of the teeth, any small object that is mixed with the provender. Next to this comes the habit of stabled cows, and of such as suffer from a lack of phosphates or other important element in the food, of licking, chewing, and swallowing articles that can in no sense be considered as alimentary.
Among the rounded or smooth bodies found in the rumen and reticulum may be named coins, rivets, fragments of wood, cords, pieces of rope, leather, gloves, cloth, small garments like vests or caps, ribbons, bones, pieces of lead, dried paints, cotton waste used as packing for machinery, shot, and even small animals such as frogs, toads, and snakes; also sand and pebbles.