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You are here: Home / Science / Do cows really have four stomachs?

Do cows really have four stomachs?

July 13, 2020 by Karen Hill

No. A cow has one stomach, but it has four chambers.

Those chambers are a necessity, because grass is very hard to fully digest. It takes a lot of nutrients to make a contented cow, so a typical cow takes in 100 pounds of grass and 300 pounds of water a day.

The food first goes into the rumen, the first chamber of its stomach. After digesting for a while, the cow regurgitates the cud and chews it to break down the grass even further.

After that, it swallows the mess into its second stomach chamber, the reticulum.

From there, the food passes leisurely through two other chambers, the masum and the abomasum, before cruising down the intestines and back into the meadow.

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Filed Under: Science

About Karen Hill

Karen Hill is a freelance writer, editor, and columnist. Born in New York, her work has appeared in the Examiner, Yahoo News, Buzzfeed, among others.

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