Naturally, cows wouldn’t have access to a limitless supply of corn that has been selectively cultivated over the years to have higher sugar and starch content. They don’t tend to have this issue when they’re eating primarily grass and can easily release it on their own by burping.
There would surely be some odd cases here and there of cows getting bloated on a less grain-heavy diet, but not nearly as common
Yes, but they wouldn’t have access to it in the first place if humans hadn’t existed, since corn is a new world plant, and the aurochs that domestic cattle descended from were from Eurasia.
And corn as we know it today is very much the product of thousands of years of agriculture. The wild teosinte plants that corn descends from didn’t have the big ears of sweet starchy kernels we know as corn today, it looked a lot more like grass that hasn’t been mowed in a long time that’s starting to go to seed, except scaled up a bit. If you look up pictures of “Zea diploperennis” or "Zea perennis that’s more like what natural corn looked like before humans started fucking with it.
And even if wild cows had access to wild corn, which they didn’t, they probably would have been chowing down on the whole plant, so mostly fiber with a bit of starch and sugar from comparatively few and small seeds, instead of just all corn kernels.
Naturally, cows wouldn’t have access to a limitless supply of corn that has been selectively cultivated over the years to have higher sugar and starch content. They don’t tend to have this issue when they’re eating primarily grass and can easily release it on their own by burping.
There would surely be some odd cases here and there of cows getting bloated on a less grain-heavy diet, but not nearly as common
corn isn’t supernatural, and if humans disappeared today they would still have access to it
Yes, but they wouldn’t have access to it in the first place if humans hadn’t existed, since corn is a new world plant, and the aurochs that domestic cattle descended from were from Eurasia.
And corn as we know it today is very much the product of thousands of years of agriculture. The wild teosinte plants that corn descends from didn’t have the big ears of sweet starchy kernels we know as corn today, it looked a lot more like grass that hasn’t been mowed in a long time that’s starting to go to seed, except scaled up a bit. If you look up pictures of “Zea diploperennis” or "Zea perennis that’s more like what natural corn looked like before humans started fucking with it.
And even if wild cows had access to wild corn, which they didn’t, they probably would have been chowing down on the whole plant, so mostly fiber with a bit of starch and sugar from comparatively few and small seeds, instead of just all corn kernels.