Cattle Stomach: Four Parts in One
Pretend you are going to the fair today. What would you eat? Two hot dogs? Four caramel apples? How about 320 cans of soda? What? You can’t drink 320 cans of soda at once! A steer can! On average, a beef animal drinks 30 gallons of water a day. That equals about 320 cans of soda! A full grown steer eats about 25 pounds of feed each day too! They eat corn and hay though… not hot dogs and caramel apples.
Cattle, sheep and goats are called ruminants (ROOM•IN•UHNTS). They have a special stomach so they can digest roughages (grass or hay).
There are four compartments in the ruminant stomach called the:
1) rumen (ROOM•EN),
2) reticulum (REH•TICK•YOU•LUM),
3) omasum (OH•MAY•SUM), and
4) abomasums (AB•OH•MAY•SUM).
Tiny microorganisms in the stomachs help cattle digest the roughage they eat. To break down the grass and hay cattle must “burp up” a mixture of what they have already eaten.
It is called a “cud” and is about the size of a baseball.
Cows may spend as many as eight hours a day chewing their cud.