Link: http://www.margsanimals.com

This is Peepers. Can you see her puffed cheek?

When I first got the goats here, I knew nothing about what makes goats tick or what their deal was. So one day they were lying around and all of a sudden one of them looked like it was throwing up. So I got a little worried and watched some more. Pretty soon another goat looked like it was throwing up too. And then their little cheeks were all puffed up. After that motion, they started to chew. So I figured out that the darn goat was chewing its cud or in other words, a goat is a ruminant and it was ruminating. Who knew that goats chewed their cuds?

A ruminant is a mammel that digests plant-based food by initially softening it within the animal's first stomach, known as the rumen, then regurgitating the semi-digested mass, now known as the cud, and chewing it again. Sorry if this made anyone sick. It kind of made me sick but figured everyone just needed to know what a ruminant consisted of. Sounds like a lot of work to me to have all those stomachs.

Also I did not know that goats only have teeth in their lower jaw in the front of their mouths. In the back of their mouths, they have 24 molars on top and on the bottom. So if you watch a goat eat a branch off of a bush, they take the branch sideways in their mouth and chew it that way. So a goat cannot bite you very hard with its front teeth which is a good thing to know. The upper part of  their jaw in the front is a hard pad which helps with them grazing grass.

All this is just a reminder that animals have all kinds of ways of eating and chewing. Goats are very interesting to have around. They are always into everything and they love to sit on top of things.  Have you ever been around a goat??