Skin and Skin appendages

By /
SKIN

The skin or the common integument is the protective covering of the body and is continuous at the natural orifices with the mucous membranes of digestive, respiratory and urinogential tracts. It acts as a sense organ concerned with the reception of pain, temperature (warmth and cold), touch (coarse touch and tactile) and pressure sensations.

  • There are various types of nerve endings in the skin, some in the epidermis, others in the dermis, around roots of hairs etc., which serve as the receptors for the above sensations. These include
    1. Free nerve endings in the epidermis for plain.
    2. Merkel’s discs, Meissner’s corpuscles, Peritrichial plexus etc, for touch and tactile sensations.
    3. Ruffini’s corpuscles for warmth and Krause’s corpuscles for cold.
    4. Pacinian corpuscles for pressure sensation.  
SKIN APPENDAGES

The skin presents certain appendages as hair, hoof and horn

Hair
  •  The hairs are extremely variable in colour and size in different breeds and individuals.
  • They cover the entire surface of the body and are of two kinds ordinary and special.
  • The ordinary hair determines the colour of the coat of the animal.
  • The special hairs are either tactile hairs on the lips, nostrils, eyelashes, tragi of external ear, vibrissae of the nostrils or the long hairs an the tail forming the brush.
Horns
  • They are conical sheaths, which enclose the horn core of the frontal bones.
  • They vary greatly in size, form and curvatures.
  • The horn develops from the secreting membrane, the corium, which is kept attached to the horn core and is traversed by numerous blood vessels and nerves.
  • The corium of the horn is similar to that of the foot.
  • In the sheep, cutaneous pouches are present in certain situation called as the infraorbital or lacrimal pouch and interdigital pouch.
  • The skin presents fine hairs and numerous sebaceous glands.
Hoof
  • There are four hoofs in each limb in the ox.
  • The accessory digits bear short conical horny coverings, the structure being the same as the hoof.
  • The hoof has three surfaces an outer convex face, an interdigital face and a solar face.
  • The hoof has only three parts periople, wall and sole. The frog, lateral cartilages and plantar cushion are absent.
  • The cloven foot takes up the function of diffusing concussion.

Scroll to Top