Cows eat corn and other grains?

Answer 1

Answer

No. They eat corn because corporations have discovered that they can fatten a cow up much faster and cheaper with corn than with grass (which is their natural food). This means that these corporations can produce a lot more meat, but it also means that the cows won't be as healthy and the meat will be of a lower quality.

Answer 2

Yes, cows will eat corn and other grains. They naturally eat only grass, although will also eat growing cereals if they can gain access to a field of a standing crop. They do eat (and enjoy) ground wheat or barley with ground beans/soya beans.

Answer 3

Cows are fed corn because often it is produced in excess to what consumers want and what the ethanol industry can use. It is also due to government subsidies that are in place for corn producers, making prices for corn as a feedstuff much cheaper than if there were no subsidies for corn production. With the encouragement from the government to produce corn, producers will respond by growing corn in order to qualify and recieve such subsidy payments. As a result, in order to find uses for the excess corn that biofuel and consumers don't use or can't eat, respectively, it is deemed suitable to be fed to livestock including Cows and Cattle.

Additionally, corn is a high-energy feedstuff, with 70 percent of a single kernel comprising of nothing but starch. Starch is essentially a form of carbohydrate which is a form of energy, and with such a cheap energy source available to American producers to use as they will, it is seen as a suitable feedstuff as an energy supplement for their cattle, and as a feedstuff to finish feeder cattle with prior to slaughter.

Answer 4

Not as a staple diet, no. However, you should feed a bovine corn or any other grain if you want to make it gain weight or need to fatten it up before slaughter. Grain is also a good supplemental feed if your hay is poorer quality than you wanted it to be, or if your cow is lactating during a time of year when the grass she eats doesn't have enough nutritive quality to aid in good milk production.

Answer 5

It depends on where these cows live. If they live in the United States, yes. Anywhere's else, there's a much higher chance they are fed something else; grass, hay, silage, barley, oats, etc.