Imagine if you could swallow your food, and save it in your stomach to nibble on a bit later. That’s what cows do.

How do they do it?

The cow’s stomach consists of four parts:

When a cow eats it does not chew its food very well. The food travels down its digestive tract and is stored in a section of the stomach called the rumen. Every now and again the food will move back into the cow’s mouth and it will chew it again. That’s when we say the cow is ruminating or chewing the cud.

The mixture of saliva and stomach acids (enzymes) slowly digests the mass of food. It then starts moving through the rest of the stomach (the reticulum, omasum and abomasums) to the small intestine. The cow absorbs more nutrients from the food there. The nutrients reach the blood, which transports them to the different body cells and to the udder where the milk is formed.

Fast Fact: South Africa's top dairy cows are Friesland, Jersey, Ayrshire and Guernsey.