Sal/Manteca/Panela: Ethnoveterinary Practice in Highland Ecuador

In this essay, I analyze the feeding of salt, lard, and raw sugar balls to cattle, as practiced in the southern Ecuadorian highlands. These balls provide nutritional satisfaction for cattle and conceptual satisfaction for their owners. Domestic animals are understood to share many human characteristics, needs, and desires. The metaphoric extension of these traits to cattle responds to the quest not only for cognitive order, but also for the pragmatic purposes of management in an uncertain and precarious agrarian environment, [agriculture, animals, ethnoveterinary medicine, metaphor, Ecuador]