Is feed corn fed to fatten cattle or to just feed them?
Both and neither, as it depends on your location, the type of cattle you own and how you choose to raise them. Many areas exist in the world where corn (in reference to it as a grain, not a plant) is unavailable and/or too expensive to purchase to be considered as worthwhile feed--supplement or not--for a producer's animals. Various places exist in the world--such as the not-so-southerly areas of the five largest provinces of Canada--where the growing season is too short and summer temperatures are too cool for growing corn as a grain crop, even though some such Canadian producers can grow it as silage or as a standing crop for their cattle, but never for corn grain. Such areas are much more ideal for growing barley, oats and wheat instead.Even if it is available and relatively inexpensive, many producers will choose to not feed such a feed to either fatten their animals or just to feed them because it's their choice not to based on their animals' genetics, their management practices which determine the lack of a need to feed such a feedstuff to their animals, and their finances.I would like to address the first and second parts of this question before I draw any kind of conclusion as to what a good answer to this question will be.Fattening cattleAs mentioned above, not every producer in the world has access to corn to finish their cattle for slaughter, and not every producer chooses to feed this grain to their finishers. Many producers in various parts of the world have access to other, often considered "better" grains than corn, including barley, rye, wheat, oats and triticale. A few producers who like to target the "grass-fed" (more precisely termed "grass-finished") market choose to boycott feeding any sort of grain to their cattle. Instead they choose to feed them grass, even in its most domesticated or tame form, such as standing corn plants or swathed winter oats."To Just Feed Them"To be frank, it is a very pathetic excuse to feed corn to cattle because you want to "just feed them" such a grain because no such excuse exists in the cattle industry, regardless if we're talking beef or dairy. There is always a reason why you choose to feed grain to cattle, never just because you can.Corn is considered an energy feedstuff because of the high starch content found in the endosperm. Seventy (70) percent of a single grain of corn is starch, and only 10 percent is protein. Thus, if it's available and inexpensive (relatively speaking), the primary reason a producer would choose to feed his/her cattle corn excluding the means to fatten them up for slaughter would be to encourage weight gain by increasing the energy content of their current ration.Energy content of a ration will need to be increased if a producer's cattle are thinner than they should be and/or are not gaining nor maintaining weight on the current feed--be it grass, hay, or silage--they are fed; poor reproductive rates have been found to be associated with a lower-than-recommended energy intake in a herd's ration by a hired cattle nutritionist; a feed report has come back telling a producer that the current ration is deficient in energy content; cattle are cold-stressed; and pasture and feed supplies are stretched to the limit so much that grain needs to be fed to stretch them out as much as possible until feed can be purchased and brought in.The current issue with today is that majority of corn grown in the USA and parts of Canada is grown for the production of ethanol, not for livestock feed as is the common belief--but partly true, nonetheless. The by-product of the ethanol industry, DDG (dried distiller's grains) is fed to cattle, but only as part of a ration, never as a ration itself due to the particles being extremely fine to the point of powder, and the high content in protein and fat (which is what you get when the starch portion of the grain is extracted for ethanol). If DDG is fed by itself, it will cause acidosis. DDG is purchased to feed to cattle by producers who have easy access to such a by-product and can purchase it in large quantities, usually.Regardless, the ethanol industry, encouraged by the federal government through subsities to farmers to grow corn to meet demands for a "clean" fuel source, is taking over and surpassing the demand of corn being used for feed or food. Such demands increase the price of corn, making it more difficult and costly for producers to purchase such a high-energy feed source for their animals should they need it. As mentioned before, there is no such thing as feeding a grain just because you can. Presently, this is most certainly the case, however in the past this may have not been such, particularly if/when the price of corn grain was much cheaper than it is now. With prices higher than what cattle producers like to see or have, they must have a very good excuse and compelling reason to purchase such a grain for their cattle. Otherwise, they're sunk or faced with the alternative to change things so that grain is no longer a requirement as part of their operation.
