The digestive system of the horse is a long and complex system that ensures that a horse gets enough nutrients to different parts of his body. It is also a very delicate system because of its size and complex nature. With all the different twists and turns that are involved in the process of digestion it is easy for this process to go wrong, which could cause a horse to experience extreme discomfort or even the loss of its life.
The process of digestion begins with the grass. To survive a horse needs grass, and to grow grass need fertilization, which are provided by the waste products of the horse’s digestive tract. It is a continuous cycle, and, if one did not have the other to help it grow it would not prosper as well. So now the cycle begins with the picking up of food.
When a horse bends down to pick up a piece of food that he wants to eat he uses his teeth. Teeth are very important for a horse. A horse uses them to hold on to the food he is eating and uses his molars to grind up the food into many small pieces. Also while the horse is grinding up food the tongue is being used to hold food in place so that it does not slip to the front of his mouth or change positions when he does not want it to.
After the horse has adequately ground up his food he swallows and sends it down his esophagus. The esophagus is one of the simplest parts in the horse’s digestion. It is just a passageway from the mouth to the stomach that is composed of rings of muscles which contracts and relaxes to bring the food to the stomach.
At the bottom of the esophagus there is a muscle called the cardiac sphincter. This muscle keeps food inside of the horse’s stomach, so if a horse suddenly had to stop eating and run away from...
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...gestion, then expels the remains of the undigested food so that more plants can grow. Then an animal eats that, and the cycle begins again. It is continuously going so that plants and animals all get the right amount of nutrients, to survive, so that many more generations can follow.
Works Cited
Oke, Stacey. 2010. The Horse’s Digestive System: Basics on the Structure and Function of the Equine Digestive Tract. Retrieved October 2, 2010 http://www.thehorse.com/pdf/factsheets/digestive-tract.pdf
2008. Horse Anatomy of the Digestive System. Retrieved October 2, 2010, http://www.understanding-horse-nutrition.com/horse-anatomy.html
2005. Colic. Retrieved October 2, 2010, http://www.ultimatehorsesite.com/info/colic.html
2010. How the Digestive System Works. Retrieved October 2, 2010, http://newrider/Library/Horse_Care/digestion.html
In Labs 22 through 26, my lab partner and I were assigned a fetal pig to perform a dissection on in order to understand anatomy, the study of an organism’s structure1, and physiology, the study of the functions and activities of a living organism2. Throughout these labs, we studied the structure of the fetal pig and performed experiments to understand four system processes: digestion, cardiovascular, respiratory, and excretory. Dissecting an organism, physically moving and seeing the different portions of the organism, especially of a fetal pig, is very important. This helps in the understanding of the skeletal structure and what series of physical and chemical processes the mammalian species body performs in order to survive.
The use of horses for human consumption dates back to the earliest use of animals for human consumption. Horses are used for food in many counties but are also considered inhumane in other countries. In the United States specifically, horsemeat is not the norm for consumed meat. There seems to be a problem that has arisen. It is suspected that horses being slaughtered at horse slaughtering factories are not the most up to date, pain free for the horse, and human as people suspect them to be like beef kill floors.
•The forty five year old patient is diagnosed with the progressive cirrhosis inflaming the liver along with the parenchymal cells. The plain symptoms is manifested primarily because of the augmentation of edema internally in the lower abdomen.
Horses and ponies that tend to store fair amounts of fat on their neck, butt and where their sheath or teats are can become chronically laminitic. However, this chronic laminitis is not limited to overweight or obese animals, but can occur in horses and ponies who are significantly leaner in their body or even, in some cases, perfectly normal. One key element to each of these horses and ponies is that they could possibly have a condition known as Equine Metabolic Syndrome (EMS) which is causing the chronic laminitic issue.
When riding a horse you don’t just sit there and do nothing, You work hard to control a 800-1000 pound animal. You have to push your horse and yourself to the greatest you can be. It is a lot of work, it is just like any other sport. You have to go ride your horse at least 4 times a week, you practice in the wind, rain, snow, when it’s hot out, and event when it is freezing cold.
...s limited supply to minimise stress. Horses should be kept off the first new shoots after a period of stress such as drought. The NSC concentration can be reduced by waiting until the new grass has two the three leaves per tiller. This allows the sugars that have gathered in the underground storage organs to be utilised for production.
The digestive system, in organisms like the mink and human, is supposed to break down the food being eaten to transfer into energy. This energy helps other functions of the body that would in turn keep it alive. The digestive system includes organs such as the stomach, intestines, liver, etc. Digestion starts at the mouth, though.
The digestive system of the horse consists of a simple stomach, small intestines, cecum, large and small colons, rectum and anus. The horse’s stomach is comparatively small in size. The stomach of an average horse has a holding capacity of about two gallons. This may be the reason horses eat small but frequent meals. From the stomach, food moves to the small intestine, which is the main site of digestion.
When you first start training a horse you want to start with doing the ground work. When you are doing the ground work such as leading, lunging, brushing, picking up the hooves, putting on the saddle, blanket, and bridal, and putting weight on the saddle, the ground work allows you know the horse and the horse also starts to know you. It is very important to have a good relationship with your horse because you want your horse to respect you and also know who you are. When doing these steps you should do them in order.
Esophagus: Esophagus is a long straight tube which connects the pharynx to the stomach. Once the food has been reduced to a soft mush, the tongue pushes it to the throat which leads to a long straight tube called esophagus. The esophagus squeezes the mass of food with rhythmic muscle contraction called peristalsis which then forces the food to the stomach.
Mouth- Digestion begins in the mouth. Physical actions, such as chewing, breaks food into small parts so it can be easily digested. Next, salivary glands secrete an enzyme called saliva to mix with food to start the breaking down of carbohydrates (WebMD (2).) From the mouth, food travels to the pharynx, or throat, by swallowing,
...ve eaten, to break down the food into a liquid mixture and to slowly empty that liquid mixture into the small intestine. Once the bolus has entered your stomach it begins to be broken down with the help of the strong muscles and gastric juices which are located in the walls of your stomach. The gastric juices are made up of hydrochloric acid, water, and mucus- and the main enzyme inside of your stomach is what is known as pepsin, which needs to be surrounded in an acidic setting in order to do its job, that is to break down protein. Once the bolus has been inside of your stomach for long enough it begins to form into a liquid called chyme, and what keeps the chyme from flowing back into our esophagus are ring shaped muscles known as sphincters located at the beginnings and ends of the stomach and they have the task of controlling the flow of solids and liquids.
Imagine you are eating a sandwich containing wheat bread, ham, lettuce, and Swiss cheese. Do you ever wonder where the nutrients go from all of the previous listed ingredients? Well, when a bite of this sandwich is taken, the mouth produces a saliva enzyme called amylase. This enzyme immediately goes to work by breaking down the carbohydrates that are in the bread. Once, the bite is completely chewed, the contents then are swallowed and go down the esophagus and begin to head towards the upper esophageal sphincter and the is involuntarily pushed towards the stomach. The next passage for the sandwich is to go through the lower esophageal sphincter; which transports the sandwich into the stomach.
I have been working with horses since the age of 8, riding and doing rodeos. I have worked on many different ranches, based on that experience and from what I saw observing Buffy I would place a firm belief that to a horse vision and touch are fundamentally the most important special senses in their day-to-day lives. Horses reply on vision to see what is around them and to be well acquainted to their environment and changes around their environment. Also, Touch is very important for many reasons. In example when it comes to interaction with other horses certain behavior displays show their feeling to other animals or show their emotion to a situation. Touch also gives certain sensitivity to how they approach an environment and due to the nerve endings in their hoofs they can easily navigate the ground they roam on.
First, horses relate to humans internally by sharing similar characteristics. The lungs of the horses are very similar to those of humans; it contains a large left and right lobe. The lobes of the liver are similar in both species; however, the horse has a bile duct that empties into the duodenum. Unlike humans, horses do not have a gallbladder. Horses also have the small intestines as a major organ but the major difference is that unlike humans, the adult horses intestines is an average of about 70 feet long. The horses are nasal breathers by obligation, unlike humans; they cannot breathe through their mouths. They have long