South Devon Cow:

The South Devon cow is a breed of cattle that hails from the British Isles and traces its ancestry way back to Normandy during theinvasions of Normans into Britain.



This breed of cow is not one that is a great milk producer and therefore is mostly bred for its beef production. The breed has been very successful wherever it has been introduced and one of these success stories has been in Australia. The South Devon breed is one of the major breeds in Australia since it was one of the first breeds to be taken across the seas to populate this new patch of land.

South Devon care involves ensuring that the animal gets a complete mineral intake from its food. One of the major problems that have people worried about cow nutrition is the use of inorganic feeds to help improve the growth potential of the animal and therefore get it ready for milking or for slaughter. Just like all breeds of cow, South Devon health issues primarily centers around Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy or BSE – more commonly known as mad cow disease.



This is caused not by a pathogen or a genetic defect but rather by rogue proteins called prions.

Pathogenic Prions are a group of proteins that are technically termed as misfolded. This means that because of their molecular structure they are slightly different from regular prion proteins. These proteins are a major component of the central nervous system and the brain. When a misfolded prion comes into a contact with a regular prion, it alters the normal prion into a misfolded shape as well. These then go on to disrupt more prions until every prion protein in the nervous system is misfolded. This is the reason for the rapid descent in neural function in a case of BSE. Prions are infectious when tissue material from an infected cow comes into contact with a healthy animal. This can happen if the cattle feed that you are using is actually created from cattle cadavers. This simply means one thing. If you are a cattle herder then you should be allowing your cows to graze and not eat organically produced feeds. There is also much prudence in supplementing water supplies that your cattle drink with mineral contents that might be lacking in any way. Large grazing areas should be provided for when raising these animals for milk or for meat production.