The size of a herd measures wealth, prestige, and personal satisfaction. Herdsmen coddle their large, lyre-horned beasts almost as pets, singing to them, lovingly rubbing them with ash to ward off mosquitoes. A keeper of cattle composes songs about his beasts to the rhythm of cattle hooves. He brings his best animal courting. Later, he presents a gift of 40 or 50 cattle to his bride's family.
Cattle provide milk, flavored with ash, or mixed with cattle blood in famine times.
Rarely are they killed, and then only in sacrificial rites. Outside the huts, women crush grain between stones or pound it with lek poles in deep dong bowls. Children thrust spears into muddy ground and bring up whiskered lungfish. So it was in peacetime. But that was long ago.