Bovine Information

For your reading pleasure. You never know when information like this might come in handy.

• Young cattle are called calves.
• A young female before she has calved is called a 'heifer'.
• A young female that has had only one calf is sometimes called a "first-calf heifer."
• A young male is a "bullock." The term "bullock," or "steer," is also used to denote a castrated male, unless kept for draft purposes, in which case it is called an "ox" (plural "oxen"), not to be confused with the related wild musk ox.
• If castrated as an adult, it is called a "stag."
• An intact male is called a "bull."
• An adult female who has had more than two calves is called a "cow."
• The adjective applying to cattle is "bovine".

An ox is nothing more than a mature bovine with an "education." The education consists of the animal's learning to respond appropriately to the teamster's (ox driver's) signals. These signals are given by verbal commands or by noise (whip cracks) and many teamsters were known for their voices and language. In North America, the commands are:

(1) get up
(2) whoa
(3) back up
(4) gee (turn to the right)
(5) haw (turn to the left)

Oxen must be painstakingly trained from a young age. Their teamster must make or buy as many as a dozen yokes of different sizes as the animals grow. A wooden yoke is fastened about the neck of each pair so that the force of draft is distributed across their shoulders. From calves, oxen are chosen with horns since the horns hold the yoke in place when the oxen lower their heads, back up, or slow down (particularly with a wheeled vehicle going downhill). Yoked oxen cannot slow a load like harnessed horses can; the load has to be controlled downhill by other means. The gait of the ox is often important to ox trainers, since the speed the animal walks should roughly match the gait of the ox driver who must work with it.

See previous post dated Tuesday, June 12, 2007 titled, "Cattle".