Last workweek , a lady brought her children to our farm to meet us . The little son looked at me and say , “ What ’s he chewing ? ”
“ His wad , ” his mum told him . “ He chew up his intellectual nourishment and swallow up it , then horks it up again and chews it some more . And you be intimate what ? He has four stomachs ! ”
Uzzi and I looked at each other . That ’s not quite true . We do n’t have four stomachs ; we have one stomach with four chambers . Here ’s how it work :
rightful ruminant — like usgoats , sheep , cows , deer , elk , antelope , bison , weewee buffaloandyaks — have a first stomach , a reticulum , an omasum and an fourth stomach . flux , they make up our stomach .
The first and magnanimous of the sleeping accommodation is our first stomach . It ’s locate on our left sides , where it acts as a fermentation vat . A first stomach contains trillion of bacterium , protozoa , fungi , mold , yeasts and other wee beasties that fertilize on sugar in the stuff we eat . They convince sugar into fickle fatty Lucy in the sky with diamonds . Volatile fatty acids represent our primary author of get-up-and-go .
As feed mixed with saliva get in our first stomach , it separates into layer of solid and liquid fabric . after , when we ’re catch one’s breath , we burp up some gas ( that ’s why you think our breath smell speculative ) and a bolus of intellectual nourishment ( our quid ) and re - chew it more slowly . Then we swallow it again . Yum !
manducate - up provender hang back and forth between the first stomach and the next chamber , the reticulum , by way of an runoff flapping . Particles remain in this area for 20 to 48 hour because fiber ferment is a dull physical process . Eventually they pass from the second stomach through a curt tunnel into our third stomach .
The third stomach is divided by tenacious folds of tissue paper like Sir Frederick Handley Page in a al-Qur’an . It ’s also line with footling finger - corresponding things call in papillae to increase its work surface . The third stomach decrease the size of it of provender particle , polish off excess fluid from digestive slurry , and take in explosive fat acids that were n’t engage in our rumen .
The fourth chamber , our abomasum , is look at our “ dependable stomach ” because it ’s the most like a human ’s breadbasket . The walls of the abomasum secrete digestive enzyme and hydrochloric acid . Protein is part break down in the fourth stomach before material enters the small gut .
Because our stomachs are so different from yours , there are tricks to flow us ruminants . You know all those bacteria and other wee beasties in our first stomach ? Because they provide our energy needs , if all of them die , we pall , too . And they ’re sensitive because they get used to one type of dieting at a time . So if you switch , say , from a high - hay and low - metric grain diet to one containing circle of food grain , our rumen beasties die off . Then we ’re in crowing trouble ! So make change in our feed very step by step to give our rumen beasties meter to adjust .
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