Special Sub-Topic: Digestive System Of The Horse Click Here To Play: Digestive System Of The Horse

Food is taken into the mouth by highly selective prehensile lips. As the food is chewed, saliva is added from one of ____ pairs of salivary glands.

four. The horse has four pairs of salivary glands; parotid, sublingual, mandibular and buccal. Around three gallons of saliva is produced daily and contains bicarbonate, which is an alkaline to help neutralise or buffer acid in the stomach.

The epiglotis passes over the trachea to prevent food from entering the lungs. Instead it passes through the pharynx into the _______.

oesophagus. The oesaphagus is a muscular tube 1.2-1.5m long. Food is pushed along the oesophagus by a continuous muscular contraction known as peristalsis or 'peristaltic wave'.

Food enters the ______ via the cardiac sphincter.

stomach. The stomach of the horse is relatively small (about the size of a rugby ball) and has four regions: oesphageal region, cardiac region, fundic region and pyloric region.

Food passes into the small intestine. The small intestine consists of three sections. They are _______ ________ and ______.

duodenum, jejenum, ilium. Around 50—70% of carbohydrate digestion and absorption, and almost all amino acid absorption occurs within the small intestine.

The small intestine requires ________ conditions.

alkaline. The digestive enzymes in the small intestine require alkaline conditions to function correctly. This is produced by pancreatic juice from the pancreas and bile from the liver.

Bile is produced in the _____.

liver. The horse has no gall bladder to store bile, instead it trickles continuously into the duodenum from the liver via the bile duct.

The _____ _________ is made up of caecum, large colon, small colon and rectum.

large intestine & large intestines. The large intestine is responsible for most fibre digestion.

The large intestine has many changes of direction throughout its length, these are known as ________ and are vulnerable to blockages (colic).

flexures. The large intestine is 3-4 meters long and is folded in order to fit into the abdomen.

Water is absorbed from digesta throughout the large intestine so that by the time digesta reaches the _____ it is of a firm consistency.

rectum. The rectum is a short tube connecting the small colon to the anus. It acts as storage area for faeces before being evacuated as dung.

The horse's digestive tract is approximately ___ feet long.

100. In order to fit into the abdomen, the digestive tract is loosely coiled and held in place by sheets of mesentery tissue.