Sentence:  ‘Children crawled over each other like little grey worms in the gutters,' he said. ‘The only red things about them were their buttocks and they were raw. Their faces looked as if snails had slimed on them and their mothers were like great sick <WSD>beasts</WSD> whose byres had never been cleared. […]' 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  (more specific) A domestic animal, especially a bovine farm animal.