Anatomy And Physiology And External Orientation

Before a livestock officer opens a single textbook on the rumen or the heart, she runs her eyes and her hands over the animal in front of her: the set of its ears, the fill of its flank, the dryness of its muzzle, the way it stands on its pasterns. Every farmer, buyer and veterinary officer in Nigeria reads an animal this way first, from the outside in, using a shared vocabulary of named body regions long before any internal system is discussed. That vocabulary, and the two words that frame everything else in this section of the syllabus, anatomy and physiology, are what this lesson builds.

You will learn precisely what anatomy and physiology mean and how they differ, why a stockman who knows both spots trouble earlier and treats it more safely, and the standard external points, poll, muzzle, dewlap, withers, brisket, barrel, flank, hock and pastern, used to describe conformation and locate a problem exactly. Eight further notes in this section will each open up one internal system, the digestive, nervous, endocrine, integumentary, skeletal, muscular, reproductive, circulatory, respiratory and excretory systems in turn, and every one of them leans on the orientation you learn here.