AVS-4160 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Premolar, Foregut, Cecum
19 Aug 2016
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Document Summary
People don"t hindgut ferment as much as horses because we don"t have a cecum and we have a different microbial population in our guts due to differences in our diets. The foregut includes the stomach and small intestine. For horses, most of the enzymatic digestion occurs in the small intestine. Complex carbohydrates have glucose bonds that are linked in multiple ways. The horse has 70 feet of small intestine. The sacculations of the large intestine increase its surface area and allow it to stretch. There are two main flexures in the hind gut: the diaphragmatic flexure and the pelvic flexure. The pelvic flexure is the main site where impaction colic occurs. Factors that contribute to a risk of impaction colic at the pelvic flexure include a decrease in diameter and a 180 degree turn. Horses chew roughage 3-4 times longer than concentrates. This is because concentrates are already of a small particle size.
