Basic Concept of Ruminant Digestive System
Ruminants are mammals that eat plants. The most well-known fact about these animals is that they have four-chambered stomachs that help them digest food. This process through which these ruminants extract nutrition from the food they consume is known as rumination.
Examples of ruminants are Cows, Sheep, Buffalos, Yaks, Giraffes, and Deer.
We see cows chewing their food for very long periods. This happens because Ruminants are animals who can ferment the eaten food, regurgitate it, and chew it again through rumination.
The way their food digests is entirely different from the human digestive system.
The way our digestion happens is a process where we eat food through our mouths. It goes through the food pipe, stomach, and intestine.
However, for Ruminants, the process is not this way.
The Ruminant Digestive System
Let us discuss the Ruminant Digestive System.
Ruminants are animals that chew and swallow their food, and this process is the same as us, which is the first stage of their digestion.
Ruminants always eat different parts of the high fiber plants like the leaves and the grass.
As these parts are high fiber, they are more challenging to digest. This is a situation where the Cellulose Enzyme helps these ruminants digest all the fiber contents.
As animals cannot create these enzymes themselves, they need a different system to digest plant products.
Among the four stomach chambers in a Ruminant, 'Rumen' is the most important. Rumen is the stomach chamber that helps these animals digest the plant food's high fiber content.
Hence, the rumen function is vital for a Ruminant to complete its digestion correctly.
Structure of a Ruminant Digestive System
We need to understand the structure of the digestive system of a Ruminant to clear our concept of the process behind it.
The digestive tract of a Ruminant includes these organs:
Mouth
Esophagus
A Four-Chambered Stomach that includes:
Rumen: The most significant part of the stomach, Rumen, can hold about 50 gallons of partially digested food at any time. It contains enzymes that digest the food easily for a Ruminant animal. These enzymes break down the fibrous food and its cellulose. The food often spends 15-48 hours coming in and out of the Rumen as it is swallowed, chewed, regurgitated again and again until it goes to the next part of the stomach, the Reticulum.
Reticulum: The Reticulum is the part of the stomach that catches anything the Ruminant should not have eaten. The Reticulum catches things like rocks, plastic, or wire. It also makes the eaten grass softer so that it is easier to digest.
Omasum: This part filters the food, squeezes out the water, and further breaks down the eaten food.
Abomasum: This part of the stomach is at the end and completes the entire digestion process. It passes the vital nutrients to the animal's bloodstream and sends the rest to the intestines.
The Small and Large Intestines
Test Your Knowledge
1. What is the Structure of a Ruminant Stomach?
a. 2-chambered.
b. 3-chambered.
c. 4-chambered.
d. single-chambered.
Ans: c. 4-chambered. The four chambers of the ruminant stomach are the rumen, reticulum, omasum, and abomasums.
2. Tiger and Cow are Examples of Ruminants. Is it Correct?
Ans: No. The correct two examples of ruminants can be cows and sheep.
3. What are Ruminant Animals?
Ans: Ruminant animals are those who consume plant products as food.
Process of Digestion in Ruminants
The ruminant digestive system starts by chewing and gulping food. These animals don’t chew their food completely. They consume the maximum amount of food possible and swallow it. Ruminants have adopted this process to save themselves from predator attacks while collecting food.
Rumen and reticulum, two chambers of their stomach, start the digestion process by softening the consumed food. After that, microbes in the rumen produce an enzyme called cellulase. This enzyme helps in digesting cellulose present in plant products.
This way, all the nutrients such as proteins, vitamins, organic acids, etc. are absorbed by the animals into their bloodstream. However, coarse plants that remain to be digested move to the further chamber for further breakdown. In this chamber, the food transforms into chunks known as cud.
This cud is transferred back to the mouth of ruminants for regurgitation. In this process, these animals again start chewing cud. Ruminants’ saliva helps accelerate the digestion process. Once the chewing process is completed, food enters the omasum bypassing the first two chambers of the stomach.
In this chamber, the food is further processed and passed to the last chamber called abomasums. After completing the final digestion, this chamber passes the food to the intestine.
If you want to learn more about the ruminant digestive system, or about any other topic of biology, go through the course materials available on our website today. You can also download the Vedantu app for further materials about the ruminant digestive system.
FAQs on Ruminant Digestive System
Why do Ruminants complete their digestion in two steps?
We often see ruminants like cows chew their food for a long time, sometimes even when there is no available food around them.
Ruminants usually digest their food halfway through, and they do this again for a second time. This process softens the food, and now that the animal can chew it even better, it gets easier to get further digested.
This is why Ruminants swallow the same food two times. The stomach and its four parts, Rumen, Reticulum, Omasum, and Abomasum, also help heavily in this process of rumination.
What is so unique about Ruminants?
The Ruminants are unique because they are animals that can survive on grass and water only.
For getting the most out of their food, ruminants spend plenty of time chewing their food which, after getting half-chewed and digested, is chewed again in the form of cud. They chew this cud, sometimes even up to eight hours a day.
The cud comprises some of the tougher chunks of the food eaten by the ruminants and serves as the food meant to be re-chewed for further digestion.
What do Ruminants eat?
Ruminants are animals designed to consume forages. Forages include foods like grass, hay, good pasture, and alfalfa.
Ruminants can consume just these forages and water and meet their daily needs for energy to grow, reproduce and stay healthy.
However, when we talk about ruminant farm animals, they are also fed different qualities of roughage. These roughages have concentrates containing whole corn, barley, wheat, oats, or other high carbohydrate feeds.
In contrast, wild ruminants might end up eating elements other than wild grass and plants that might be harder to digest. This is where the four-chamber stomach comes in handy, which uses the process of rumination and helps the animals digest all their food.
What is the digestion process in a Ruminant called? How does it work?
The process of a ruminant digesting its food is known as Rumination. It works in different steps as follows:
This process starts when a ruminant chews its food down. The thing to notice is that it does not chew its food completely.
They consume the utmost amount of food that is possible and swallow it. They have adopted this process over generations of protecting themselves from predators while collecting food.
After this, the Rumen and the Reticulum start the digestion process by softening and breaking down the food even more. The enzymes in rumen help digest the cellulose present in these fiber-rich foods.
Through this useful parts of the food like proteins, vitamins and organic acids are absorbed by the ruminants into their bloodstream. However, the indigestible items move further to the other chambers of the stomach.
After the further breakdown, the animal can chew the food again, but now the fold has turned into cud. As the cud regurgitates and goes back to the mouth, the animal chews it, and now the food goes to the omasum chamber for further digestion.
The abomasum is the last chamber that completes this final digestion and sends the food to the intestines.
