Beestings

Beestings (technically colostrum) is the term applied to the first milk yielded after delivery. It differs not a little from ordinary milk, and generally appears as a turbid, yellowish, viscid fluid, similar to soap and water. When examined under the microscope, it is found to contain, in addition to the ordinary milk corpuscles (see MILK), peculiar conglomerations of very minute fat granules, which are hence known as colostrum corpuscles. The chief chemical differences between beestings and milk are, that the former is very deficient in casein and proportionately rich in albumen, and that it contains nearly three times more salts than the latter. It is probably this excess of salts that usually causes it to exert a purgative effect upon the new-born offspring, and thus to remove the Meconium (q.v.) which has accumulated in the foetal intestine.