As someone raised on a farm, I can tell you:

wheat, rye, etc. aint that tall (no more than 3 feet)  a cow could eat them
easily

and, many prairie grasses are far taller -- bluestem for one grows to well
over 6 feet.  bluestem was one of dominant grasses of the tallgrass
prairie.  apparently, the tallgrass prairie grew so high, it could hide a
man on horseback.

At 06:19 PM 9/18/99 -0400, you wrote:
>On Sat, 18 Sep 1999, Don Wiss wrote:
>
>> Todd Moody wrote:
>>
>> >I still maintain that gluten is a normal part of a cow's diet,
>> >because gluten is in grass seeds, which are part of the grass
>> >that is the cow's normal diet.
>>
>> As far as I know there is no gluten in grass seeds, but only in wheat, rye
>> and barley. All of them are much taller plants than regular prairie grass.
>> Do cows eat grasses that are that tall?
>
>Wheat, rye, and barley *are* grasses.  A cow is not limited to
>one particular type of grass.  Grasslands support grasses of many
>types, and grasslands are precisely the sort of place where
>grass-eaters such as cows can make a good living.  Wheat grass is
>tall, but not so tall as to prevent a cow from eating it.
>
>> Then you have the question of where cows are from, before humans
>> domesticated them. Possible not in an area where wheat, rye or barley grow.
>
>Again, cows -- or their predecessors the Aurochs -- are grassland
>herbivores.  That is their ecological niche.  Wheat, rye, and
>barley grown where other grasses grow: in grasslands.  Cows have
>a lengthy digestive tract, including several stomachs, to process
>this vegetation.  Unless there is specific evidence suggesting
>that cows have a problem digesting gluten, I see no reason to
>suspect such a thing.
>
>Todd Moody
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>
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