Moose Ruminating
Moose are ruminants, as are cattle, goats, sheep and deer; they have a four-chambered stomach, which is necessary in order to digest the cellulose in the vegetation they consume. Food goes to the rumen and the reticulum, the first two chambers, which contain bacteria and other microorganisms that help digest the cellulose as it mixes with saliva. Here the food separates into solids and liquid material and the solids clump together to form the cud, which is regurgitated and chewed a second time in order to break it down into smaller bits. The third chamber, or omasum, functions as a pump, sending the food to the final chamber, the abomasum, where the digestion process is completed.
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White-tailed Deer Diet & Digestion
A white-tailed deer’s diet consists of a wide variety of herbaceous and woody plants, the ratio of one to the other being determined by the season. Fungi, fruits and herbaceous plants form much of the summer diet. Dried leaves and grasses, acorns, beechnuts and woody browse are important autumn and early winter food. After snowfall, the winter diet consists mostly of woody browse (twigs, leaves, shoots and buds) from many different trees (maples, birches and cedars among them). Come spring, deer eat buds, twigs and emerging leaves. Deer are ruminants (as are cattle, goats, sheep and moose). They have a four-chambered stomach, which is necessary in order to digest the cellulose in the vegetation they consume. Food goes first to the rumen, the first of the four chambers, which contains bacteria and other microorganisms that help digest the cellulose. Food is circulated from the rumen back to the deer’s mouth by the second chamber, or reticulum, and the deer ruminates (“chews its cud”). The third chamber, or omasum, functions as a pump, sending the food to the final chamber, the abomasum, where the digestion process is completed.
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