![]() (Or so I’ve thought because of her familiarity and calmness.) She first came with twins and spent parts of her days eating hay alongside my horses that we spread out on the snow. I was wondering if he was just still hanging out with his mother or if he joined up with them and the cow was going along with it.Ī very mellow cow has come around here in winters/springs for several years. ![]() I was calling it a rack because it was bigger than I’ve ever seen on a yearling. He was definitely bigger than the one with the cow, but not fully grown. The other was a young bull with a small rack. One was an adult cow, one seemed to be her calf from last spring (so not quite a yearling yet) that I could not see close enough to identify it as male or female. Today I had three moose come into my meadow. ![]() I live on the banks of Kachemak Bay in Homer Alaska. The cow will only breed once, while the bull’s goal is to breed as many cows as he can. But her goal is to produce the best offspring possible and how she makes that determination is her business. The cow still selects which bull she will mate with and it may be the result of the fights, or the appeal of the bull’s pheromones or other factors we are unaware of. Some documentary TV programs elude that it is the bulls’ fighting prowess that determines which bull gets to mate, that may be true but it is not the only consideration. When the cow moose go into estrus or heat, they are only then ready to be bred. That’s why predators hang around the rutting areas, it often results in injured moose bulls that are easier to overtake due to their wounds. Antlers can do some serious damage to other moose where an eye could be lost, a major organ could be pierced by an antler tip or many other injuries, such as muscle punctures could be sustained that would make it much easier for a grizzly to be successful in it’s hunt for food. Some moose can lose a substantial amount of weight when in the rut rendering them weaker and susceptible to greater injuries. The compact outer shell of the antler is of greater density and is very strong and solid and will become the weapons used when fighting other bulls during the rut which is coming up fast.īull moose stop eating when they go into the rut, partly because of the change in their hormones and also because they don’t have time as they are quite busy chasing other bulls away or fighting with them. The inner portion is less dense, spongy bone that has been highly vascularized during growth. As they dry, the antlers grow hard due to the process of mineralization and result in a two-type cartilage and bone structure 3. The itchy antler velvet gets rubbed off on trees and the bulls do not look their best as ribbons of bloody velvet hang from their antlers. At the same time bulls that are reproductively mature experience other hormonal changes in anticipation of the rut. The first frost and dwindling day light is a turning point and triggers a hormonal change in the animal whereby blood flows back into the animal’s body and stops flowing to the antlers causing the velvet to dry after a few days and become itchy. Over the summer season moose continue to gorge on vegetation as their antlers grow within the velvet encasing them, then a number of changes take place as the autumn season approaches. They can also scratch delicate parts of their anatomy with an antler tip with little fuss. One of the most remarkable examples of how well moose can control themselves with a large rack is their ability to walk through a forest and not make a sound as they weave their way through the trees with the equivalent of a kitchen table upside down on their head. They know where each antler tip is and how to control their movements with great precision. Moose adapt to the additional weight and mass of their antlers and can be very exacting in their use for scratching. The high levels of sodium found in aquatic plants help moose antlers to grow quickly. Moose happily browse the aquatic and terrestrial plants they prefer as their new antlers continue their rapid growth. These full sets of antlers are often referred to as a rack. Coastal moose in Alaska tend to grow the largest antlers due to the quality and diversity of plants that grow in the temperate coastal areas of their rain forests compared to the colder and less vegetated areas inland like the Yukon. If the animal has a rich and voluminous diet, moose antler growth can mean packing on a pound each day 2, in the form of bone of course. In fact, they are the fastest growing tissue of any mammal.
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