WHY THE COW CHEWS THE CUD.
In the dim, dark ages the cow was a much-hunted animal, compelled by her natural enemies to bolt her food and gather it in by fits and starts. Nature finds her own ways of adapting the body to tho conditions under which it has to live, and so the cow developed a crop or store-house, and in the course of time acquired the power of cudding, or remasticating at her leisure, the food she had gathered up in haste. The crop is called the big bag or rumen. It lies on tho left side, and occupies about threequarters of the abdominal cavity. At Ihe point where the gullet joins tiie rumen is an elongated valve which has at least two functions: In the first place, during cudding, it lifts and compresses a little ball of rough food in readiness to be shot up into the throat when certain musics contract and unable the cow to lift her cud, and, secondly, it forms a channel which allows at least a certain amount of fluids and cudded food to pass over the rumen to the second stomach is to believed to assist the rumen in holding liquids, and is probably necessary to llie cudding process. It also retains indigestible matter, such as stones, bits of slick and the like.
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Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVII, Issue 2969, 1 December 1925, Page 4
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223WHY THE COW CHEWS THE CUD. Manawatu Herald, Volume XLVII, Issue 2969, 1 December 1925, Page 4
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