Sheep Digestion

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Summary: Watch a naturalist from the Massachusetts Audubon Society's Drumlin Farm explain sheep digestion in this free online video.

Views: 1,448 | Tags: techniques, wool, types, food, pets, animals, animal, behavior, breeding, shepherd, wildlife, raise, farm, farming, agriculture, sheep, lambs, ewes, rams, husbandry, habits, mutton, biology, zoology, anatomy, farm animals

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About the Expert

Tia Pinney Tia Pinney is a Teacher Naturalist and Adult Program Coordinator at Mass Audubon’s Drumlin Farm Wildlife Sanctuary in Lincoln, Massachusetts. She is involved ... read more

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Video Transcript

Sheep Digestion

Okay, ruminants. Sheep are a common ruminant. A ruminant is an important thing to know because they are most of our domestic livestock, our ruminants. The major way to tell a ruminant is exactly what all of these sheep are doing right now. They have all ready eaten this morning, they've consumed large quantities of hay large for their body size but if you look at all of them, are still chewing. They are not actively eating now but they are still chewing. Because what they did was they ate a lot of hay earlier today and that hay went into their ruminant or their first segment of their stomach and now they cough it back up and they chew it again. Then it goes into the next three segments of the stomach. A ruminant is defined as having four stomachs or four segments to their stomach. And the most important thing about being a ruminant is that they can survive on grass. As humans, we would not be able to survive if we ate nothing but grass but ruminants because of that digestive system in which they essentially ferment their food, they are able to survive by consuming a quality of feed that would not maintain the rest of us. And by chewing their cud, they are able to do magic things with basic cellulose.