Animal Digestion System
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Animal System
Introduction
This essay focuses on the digestive system of ruminant animals like cattle, sheep, and goats. Ruminant animals are hoofed mammals that have a digestive system which enables them to utilize energy from fibrous plant material better than other herbivores. Unlike monogastric animals such as pigs and poultry, the digestive system or ruminants is designed to ferment feedstuffs and provide precursors for energy for the animal to use.
Ruminant Digestive system
The digestive system of ruminants like cattle enables them to efficiently use high roughage feedstuffs, including forages. Their digestive system is composed of the mouth, tongue, gall bladder, pancreas, the four compartment stomach (rumen, reticulum, omasum, and abomasum), salivary glands, the small intestine (duodenum, jejunum, and ileum), esophagus and the large intestine (cecum, colon, and rectum) (Brooker, 5).
Mouth and Teeth
A ruminant animal uses its mouth and tongue to harvest forages and consume feedstuffs during grazing. Cattle pick up feeds during grazing by grasping and gathering the plants with their tongues and pulling them to tear for consumption. On average, cattle take from 25,000 to over 40,000 prehensile bites to harvest forage while grazing each day. They typically spend over 30 percent of their time grazing, another 30 percent of their time chewing cud, and the rest of their time idling where they are not grazing or chewing cud (Hall, 9).
The roof of their mouth is a hard dental pad without incisors. The incisors on the lower jaw work against this hard dental pad. The incisors of roughage selectors are wide with a shovel-shaped crown while those of concentrate selectors are narrower and chisel-shaped. They have the same number of molars and premolars both on the upper and lower jaws. The ruminants use their teeth to crush and grind feeds during chewing and rumination (Hall, 9).
Saliva helps in moistening the feeds hence
Instructor:
Course:
Date:
Animal System
Introduction
This essay focuses on the digestive system of ruminant animals like cattle, sheep, and goats. Ruminant animals are hoofed mammals that have a digestive system which enables them to utilize energy from fibrous plant material better than other herbivores. Unlike monogastric animals such as pigs and poultry, the digestive system or ruminants is designed to ferment feedstuffs and provide precursors for energy for the animal to use.
Ruminant Digestive system
The digestive system of ruminants like cattle enables them to efficiently use high roughage feedstuffs, including forages. Their digestive system is composed of the mouth, tongue, gall bladder, pancreas, the four compartment stomach (rumen, reticulum, omasum, and abomasum), salivary glands, the small intestine (duodenum, jejunum, and ileum), esophagus and the large intestine (cecum, colon, and rectum) (Brooker, 5).
Mouth and Teeth
A ruminant animal uses its mouth and tongue to harvest forages and consume feedstuffs during grazing. Cattle pick up feeds during grazing by grasping and gathering the plants with their tongues and pulling them to tear for consumption. On average, cattle take from 25,000 to over 40,000 prehensile bites to harvest forage while grazing each day. They typically spend over 30 percent of their time grazing, another 30 percent of their time chewing cud, and the rest of their time idling where they are not grazing or chewing cud (Hall, 9).
The roof of their mouth is a hard dental pad without incisors. The incisors on the lower jaw work against this hard dental pad. The incisors of roughage selectors are wide with a shovel-shaped crown while those of concentrate selectors are narrower and chisel-shaped. They have the same number of molars and premolars both on the upper and lower jaws. The ruminants use their teeth to crush and grind feeds during chewing and rumination (Hall, 9).
Saliva helps in moistening the feeds hence
Cited: Dijkstra J. 2005: Quantitative Aspects of Ruminant Digestion and Metabolism (2nd Edition). CABI Publishing. Wallingford. Brooker, R.J., Widmaier, E.P., Graham L.E. & Stiling P.D. 2008: Biology. McGraw-Hill. New York.. Church, D. C. ed. 1993. The Ruminant Animal Digestive Physiology and Nutrition. Waveland Press, Inc. Prospect Heights, IL. Oltjen, J. W., and J. L. Beckett. 1996. Role of ruminant livestock in sustainable agricultural systems. J. Anim. Sci. 74:1406-1409. Hall, J.B., and Silver, S. 2009: Nutrition and Feeding of the Cow-Calf Herd: Digestive System of the Cow. Communications and Marketing, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University.