Cows are beautiful and interesting creatures. One of their most remarkable attributes is their highly complex and intricate digestive system. Consisting of four main compartments, or stomachs, a cow's digestive tract allows it to break down its tough, raw diet into the nutrients and energy needed to sustain its immense size and ongoing milk production. While the fact that a cow has four stomachs may be common knowledge, it's less commonly known that maintaining healthy flora is just as important to bovine gut health as it is to you and me. Fortunately for cows, achieving gut health is quite a bit less complex than their digestive tracts. In fact, a happy, healthy herd may depend greatly on the hard work of three amazingly simple microbes.
Dairy cows spend approximately 6.5 hours of each day eating, taking in roughly 100 pounds of a combination of silage, grain, hay, proteins and supplements. Breaking down a diet of this nature into usable energy and nutrients is hard work. To aid in the effort, a bovine's gut is chock-full of tiny microbes, each with its very own, specific task. Remove even a fraction of any one of these microbes and tummy troubles may affect the herd.
The rumen of a dairy cow is the largest compartment of its digestive tract and serves as a holding tank for food. While in the rumen, ingested food undergoes a series of attacks by billions of tiny microbes. These microbes fall into one of three categories; bacteria, protozoa and fungi. Bacteria by far, makes up the greatest number of microbes found in a cow's rumen. In fact, billions of these microbes are present in each gram of a bovine's digestive fluid. Every second of every day, these little guys go to work breaking down the starch, protein, fiber, fat and sugar of a cows feed into fermented goodness that serves as the energy needed to produce milk.
To illustrate how important these microbes are, consider this: More than 60 percent of the waste produced by these bacteria during this process directly affects a cow's milk fat content and therefore, can greatly affect a farmer's bottom line.
Best friends with the bacteria in a cow's gut are the tiny, but necessary, protozoa microbes. Although the full function of this mini army is not completely understood, they are believed to play a critical role in monitoring the fermentation rate of the bacteria. Partnership between the bacteria and protozoa of a bovine's gut keeps the process of fermentation running smoothly.
Last, but certainly not least, a happy, healthy cow depends on fungi to break down poor quality feed and the random contaminant. Although fungi are found in much lesser numbers than other microbes, they are completely necessary for overall gut health. We may do what we can to provide our herds with a quality diet, but unfortunately livestock feed is not always 100 percent.
When feed of lesser quality makes its way into a cow's rumen, the fungi go to work.
Cows are indeed beautiful and interesting creatures, but what may be even more beautiful and interesting is the symbiotic relationship between the bacteria, protozoa and fungi that exists in a cow's gut. Although we may not be able to see these little guys, they are busy keeping the peace in the rumen.
So next time you take a look at your happy, healthy herd, just think of the billions and billions of microbes that are hard at work keeping them that way.
- Paige Bittner is the 2017-2018 Green County Dairy Princess.
Dairy cows spend approximately 6.5 hours of each day eating, taking in roughly 100 pounds of a combination of silage, grain, hay, proteins and supplements. Breaking down a diet of this nature into usable energy and nutrients is hard work. To aid in the effort, a bovine's gut is chock-full of tiny microbes, each with its very own, specific task. Remove even a fraction of any one of these microbes and tummy troubles may affect the herd.
The rumen of a dairy cow is the largest compartment of its digestive tract and serves as a holding tank for food. While in the rumen, ingested food undergoes a series of attacks by billions of tiny microbes. These microbes fall into one of three categories; bacteria, protozoa and fungi. Bacteria by far, makes up the greatest number of microbes found in a cow's rumen. In fact, billions of these microbes are present in each gram of a bovine's digestive fluid. Every second of every day, these little guys go to work breaking down the starch, protein, fiber, fat and sugar of a cows feed into fermented goodness that serves as the energy needed to produce milk.
To illustrate how important these microbes are, consider this: More than 60 percent of the waste produced by these bacteria during this process directly affects a cow's milk fat content and therefore, can greatly affect a farmer's bottom line.
Best friends with the bacteria in a cow's gut are the tiny, but necessary, protozoa microbes. Although the full function of this mini army is not completely understood, they are believed to play a critical role in monitoring the fermentation rate of the bacteria. Partnership between the bacteria and protozoa of a bovine's gut keeps the process of fermentation running smoothly.
Last, but certainly not least, a happy, healthy cow depends on fungi to break down poor quality feed and the random contaminant. Although fungi are found in much lesser numbers than other microbes, they are completely necessary for overall gut health. We may do what we can to provide our herds with a quality diet, but unfortunately livestock feed is not always 100 percent.
When feed of lesser quality makes its way into a cow's rumen, the fungi go to work.
Cows are indeed beautiful and interesting creatures, but what may be even more beautiful and interesting is the symbiotic relationship between the bacteria, protozoa and fungi that exists in a cow's gut. Although we may not be able to see these little guys, they are busy keeping the peace in the rumen.
So next time you take a look at your happy, healthy herd, just think of the billions and billions of microbes that are hard at work keeping them that way.
- Paige Bittner is the 2017-2018 Green County Dairy Princess.