Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
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.
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 ...
If it was a cow's first time calving, she will take longer to re-breed by at least 10 days. [4] However, beef cattle can also be bred through artificial insemination, [1] depending on the cow and the size of the herd. Cattle are normally bred during the summer so that calving may occur the following spring. [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 ...
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 ]
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]
Female calves with dairy breeding may be kept as replacement cows for the dairy herd. If a replacement cow turns out to be a substandard producer of milk, she then goes to market and can be slaughtered for beef. Male calves can either be used later as a breeding bull or sold and used for veal or beef.
Cattle breeds fall into two main types, which are regarded as either two closely related species, or two subspecies of one species. Bos indicus (or Bos taurus indicus ) cattle, commonly called zebu, are adapted to hot climates and originated in the tropical parts of the world such as India, Sub-saharan Africa, China, and Southeast Asia.