Traditional Tuvan household utensils and dishes were made of different materials: wood, birch bark, leather, as well as from the cleaned intestines of livestock.

In the conditions of subsistence animal husbandry, nomadic Tuvans made containers from specially treated and purified internal organs of small and large cattle to store meat, fat, liver, and dairy products. Clarified butter was stored in the inflated and dried bladder, intestines or peritoneum of small livestock.

Tuvans used sheep and goat, cow and mare entrails to make disposable vessels to store food for the winter, such as clarified butter (sarzhag), delicacies made of the pulp left after melting butter (chokpek), sour milk-hoytpak pulp (ol aarzhy), dried aarzhy (kurgag aarzhy), vegetable and meat products.

Tuvan people closed such vessels with a sharpened stick or leather cord and suspended them from the poles of the yurt.

In the Tuvan language there are seven names of vessels and containers made of dressed internal organs of livestock: khyryn (vessel from the stomach), syny (vessel from the bladder), chumur (vessel from the stomach part of ruminants) and others.

Vessels made of livestock entrails were mainly intended for one-time use, so they were not reused for food storage. For example, frozen clarified butter was served or cut with the container.

For multiple use, a khapchyk was made from a bull’s scrotum. It was made in the following way: after slaughtering the cattle, the scrotum was separated, the inside was cleaned and filled with dry sand or stones, then dried by hanging in a dark place. In some cases, the scrotum was dressed, using leather processing technology. The outside of the scrotum bag is covered with wool. Various dried spices were stored in it.

According to Shonchalay Mongush, curator of the National Museum of the Republic of Tuva, such vessels were also used as amulets for livestock against all kinds of diseases, thieves, and predators.