Deer live in many parts of
the world. The white-tailed deer are the most common large
game animals of North
America, and are
prevalent in Nebraska.
Native
Americans taught the pioneers how to dry deer meat, or venison, in
the sun or over a campfire.
Deer, as
well as sheep, cows, camels, and antelope are ruminants.
These animals have an odd way of digesting food. They swallow
their food, usually grass, after chewing it only slightly. A
ruminant is a grazing animal that chews its cud and has split
hoofs.
Most
ruminants have a stomach with four compartments. This allows
the deer to feed very rapidly, chewing its food just enough to
swallow. This partially chewed food goes into the first
cavity, the rumen, or paunch. Each compartment helps
digest food. Some food passes directly into the second
cavity, called the reticulum.
The
reticulum has tiny pockets in its walls that look like a
honeycomb. Food stored in the rumen passes into the
reticulum, where it is softened and formed into soft masses called
cuds.
As the
animal rests, the muscles of the reticulum send the food back to
the mouth to be chewed and mixed with saliva. The animal
chews with a roundish motion of the jaw and swallows again.
The cud passes through the first two cavities into the third cavity
and finally into the fourth. From the stomach, the digestion
is completed.
My son,
Colby, saved the stomach from one of his deer. The rumen
contained about 60% green grass and the rest corn. This is
the part that functions as both a storage and fermentation
chamber. The fermentation was quite obvious in the
smell.
I peeled the honeycomb layer from the
inside of the stomach and after repeated washings hung it with rope
and stuffed it with newspaper to dry it into a container
shape. I brought it to school to use with fourth graders in
Nebraska Studies and Language writing. It was rather
interesting as they tried to identify what it was, and then what
uses the Native Americans had for it. They thought it might
be a container for liquids or maybe even used as food. They
might have cooked in it with hot stones, and then eaten the
container.
Kenneth
Thomasma in his book Naya Nuki wrote of a container for
water. Naya Nuki sighed, “I have two deerskins to fill
with water. I’ll walk back with you as soon as
they’re filled.” The students were thinking that
this could have meant a deer stomach. They continue looking
for clues to the uses of the stomach and other parts of the
deer and other animals.
Please
click on the slideshow for more pictures:
Deer Stomach
