How is a sheep biologically adapted to its way of feeding?
Sheep, like other ruminants, have a stomach with 4 compartments. These are the rumen, reticulum, omasum, and abomasum. The rumen is the largest of the four and is essentially a big fermentation vat (30-50 gallons in a cow, smaller in a ewe). It is where a bolus of food goes first after being swallowed, and it contains millions of micro-organisms that are capable of turning the cellulose in forage into volatile fatty acids (VFA’s) that are absorbed from the rumen and converted into energy. This fermentation process is the reason that ruminants can live on a grass diet. The reticulum is sometimes referred to as the ‘pace-setter’. It is located in the cranio-ventral (lower front) aspect of the rumen, and is a small muscular pouch that contracts periodically to cause regurgitation of a food bolus. When ruminants are at rest, they will regurgitate these boluses, chew on them for a while, and swallow them back down. This is what people are talking about when they say that a ewe or cow is ‘ch
