DEBT TO BACTERIA

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 75, Issue 6442, 5 November 1947, Page 12

DEBT TO BACTERIA

THEY HELP THE COW TO DIGEST HER FOOD REMARKABLE PROCESS While the modern farmer counts among his assets the live-stock below ground, the soil bacteria, he is less aware of how much he owes to the bacteria in the stomachs of his cattle and sheep. Yet, without these organisms, grass would never become butter or wool. The digestive tract of ruminants includes unique fermentation vats which convert roughage into usable food. These are the first and second stomachs. Food gulped into these stomachs, the rumen and reticulum, is violently churned and then broken down by the bacteria, back to the mouth for a second chewing, it is then swallowed and passed through the third stomach. The third stomach, known as the bible because it has leaves like the pages of a book, gives the food a final mix before it reaches the fourth or true stomach, where actual digestion takes place. Such elaborate preparation of the food enables ruminant animals to deal with bulky quantities of fibrous hay and pasture. So remarkable is the process, in fact, that one American has referred to it as the romance of the gut. During the fermentation stage many acids are produced. As a counter to them the cow pours enough saliva into her stomach each day to do the work of three-quarters of a pound of bicarbonate of soda. It is said that it is all this saliva which prevents halitosis in the cow and gives rise to what poets have called “ the sweet breath of kine.”

King-pins though bacteria are in the handling of roughage, not much is known about them. There are several kinds at work, some of which cannot be grown in the laboratory outside the rumen. Besides breaking down roughage they are known to build up proteins and vitamins from simple chemical compounds. But how the cow uses the products synthetised by the bacteria is not known for certain.

The most credible theory to date is that the food-laden bacteria are carried out of the first stomachs into the fourth stomach where they are digested like any other food. American research workers learnt the importance of these bacteria when they removed the rumen contents of a cow with a “window” in her side. She was unable to digest any food till the rumen contents of a freshly-killed steer were poured into her first stomach. Only then could fermentation and digestion take place. What is the practical upshot of all this ? As yet nothing of commercial value has been developed, but the' possibilities are great. More knowledge may show that cattle and sheep ■ can be made more efficient producers by suppying them with' additional rumen bacteria; and it is not farfetched to suggest that special strains of bacteria may be found to speed up the fermentation process and consequently the rate of food intake and meat and milk output. Indeed man controls cheese quality by breeding special varieties of “ starter ” bacteria, and the compost school juggles with soil bacteria in a most familiar way; so why not have a “ Rumic Fermentation Club ?” It would have more justification for its existence than most other cults.