Digestion in Ruminants

Ruminants, cloven-hoofed mammals of the order Artiodactyla, obtain their food by browsing or grazing, subsisting on plant material (Hungate, 1966). Today, 193 species of living ruminants exist in 6 families: Antilocapridae, Bovidae, Cervidae, Giraffidae, Moschidae and Tragulidae (Nowak, 1999). The number of wild ruminants is about 75 million and of domesticated about 3.6 billion (Hackmann and Spain, 2010). Approximately 95% of the population of domesticated ruminants constitute species: cattle, sheep and goats, all of them belong to the Bovidae family. Cattle and sheep are the two most numerous species and cattle is of the most economic importance. The economic value of milk and beef production in the EU is almost 125 billion Euro per year and accounts for 40% of total agricultural production (FAIP, 2003). The dairy cows is unique among all other mammalian species because of the intense artificial transgenerational genetic selection for milk production during the last 50 yr, so that annual averages of more than 12,500 kg/cow of milk per lactation are not uncommon (Eastridge, 2006). The selection has increased their peak energy yield by about 250% (20 Mcal × d-1 observed vs. 7.76 Mcal × d-1 expected) (Hackmann and Spain, 2010). Genetic improvement is accompanied by increasing metabolic demands for energy. The efficient use of energy of the feed resources is the main reason for the numerous and multilateral studies on carbohydrates digestion processes in cattle.