Ruminants are hoofed mammals, including cattle, sheep, and goats, with a unique digestive system that allows them to better use energy from fibrous plant material when compared with other herbivores. Unlike monogastrics such as swine and poultry, ruminants have a digestive system designed to ferment feedstuffs and provide precursors for energy for the animal to use. By better understanding how the ruminant digestive system works, livestock producers can better understand how to care for and feed ruminant animals.
The ruminant digestive system uniquely qualifies ruminant animals such as cattle to efficiently use high roughage feedstuffs, including forages. Anatomy of the ruminant digestive system includes the mouth, tongue, salivary glands producing saliva for buffering rumen pH , esophagus, four-compartment stomach rumen, reticulum, omasum, and abomasum , pancreas, gall bladder, small intestine duodenum, jejunum, and ileum , and large intestine cecum, colon, and rectum.
(mh=M2mwdgX5xdW_qL2Y)4.jpg "Adult Guide Buffalo")
A ruminant uses its mouth oral cavity and tongue to harvest forages during grazing or to consume harvested feedstuffs. Cattle harvest forages during grazing by wrapping their tongues around the plants and then pulling to tear the forage for consumption. On average, cattle take from 25, to more than 40, prehensile bites to harvest forage while grazing each day.
They typically spend more than one-third of their time grazing, one-third of their time ruminating cud chewing , and slightly less than one-third of their time idling where they are, neither grazing nor ruminating. The lower jaw incisors work against this hard dental pad. Premolars and molars match between upper and lower jaws. These teeth crush and grind plant material during initial chewing and rumination.
Saliva aids in chewing and swallowing, contains enzymes for breakdown of fat salivary lipase and starch salivary amylase , and is involved in nitrogen recycling to the rumen.
