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An "intact" (i.e., not castrated) adult male is called a bull. A father bull is called a sire with reference to his offspring, such as in the herd book or purebred records. A female bovine that has not yet had a calf is known as a heifer. An adult female that has had her first calf (or second calf, depending upon regional usage) is called a cow ...
Mature female cattle are called cows and mature male cattle are bulls. Young female cattle are called heifers, young male cattle are oxen or bullocks, and castrated male cattle are known as steers. Cattle are commonly raised for meat, for dairy products, and for leather. As draft animals, they pull carts and farm implements.
Dairy cows need to produce one calf each year in order to remain in milk production. Heifer (female) calves will nearly always become a replacement dairy cow. Some dairy heifers grow up to be mothers of beef cattle. Male dairy calves are generally reared for beef or veal; relatively few are kept for use as breeding stock.
In the English language, many animals have different names depending on whether they are male, female, young, domesticated, or in groups. The best-known source of many English words used for collective groupings of animals is The Book of Saint Albans , an essay on hunting published in 1486 and attributed to Juliana Berners . [ 1 ]
The female counterpart to a bull is a cow, while a male of the species that has been castrated is a steer, ox, [2] or bullock, although in North America, this last term refers to a young bull. [citation needed] Use of these terms varies considerably with area and dialect. Colloquially, people unfamiliar with cattle may also refer to steers and ...
It was found early on that crossing a male bison with a domestic cow would produce few offspring, but that crossing a domestic bull with a bison cow apparently solved the problem. The female offspring proved fertile, but rarely so for the males. Although the cattalo performed well, the mating problems meant the breeder had to maintain a herd of ...
A freemartin or free-martin (sometimes martin heifer) is an infertile cow with masculinized behavior and non-functioning ovaries. [1] Phenotypically, the animal appears female, but various aspects of female reproductive development are altered due to acquisition of anti-Müllerian hormone from the male twin. [2]
Most beef cattle are mated naturally, whereby a bull is released into a herd of cows approximately 55 days after the calving period, depending on the cows' body condition score (BCS). If it was a cow's first time calving, she will take longer to re-breed by at least 10 days. [4]