Steer, Heifer, Cow, Bull and Stag Are the Five Beef Animal:

Download Article

Download Commodity

There are many people worldwide who think they know what cattle wait like but cannot properly tell the difference betwixt a cow, bull, steer or heifer. Most of these people take not been taught how to distinguish between the four. This pace-by-step article is intended to teach anyone how to properly distinguish between these unlike types of cattle.

Steps

1. 1

   Learn the relevant definitions. These are:

   • Cow: a mature female bovine that has given nascence to at least one or two calves. Colloquially, the term "cow" is also in reference to the Bos primigenius species of domestic cattle, regardless of historic period, gender, breed or type. Nevertheless for most people who work with or raise cattle, this term is not used in the aforementioned reference as previously noted.
   • Balderdash: a mature, intact (testicles nowadays and not removed) male bovine used for convenance purposes.
   • Steer: a male bovine (or bull) that has been castrated before reaching sexual maturity and is primarily used for beef.^[1]
   • Stag: a male bovine (or balderdash) that has been castrated after or upon reaching sexual maturity and is primarily used for beefiness, only can and is also often used equally a "gomer bull" for detecting cows and heifers in heat.
   • Heifer: a female bovine (ofttimes immature, only across the "dogie" stage) less than 1 to two years of age that has never calved. Such females, if they've never calved beyond ii years of age may too be chosen heiferettes.
   • Bred Heifer: a female bovine that is significant with her first calf.
   • First-calf Heifer or First-calver: a female bovine that has given birth to her offset dogie, and is oft around 24 to 36 months of age, depending on the breed and when she was first bred.
   • Ox (plural: Oxen): a bovine that is trained for typhoon work (pulling carts, wagons, plows, etc.)This is a term that primarily refers to a male bovine that has been castrated after maturity. Yet, an ox tin also be female person bovine (cow or heifer) or fifty-fifty a bull that has been trained for the aforementioned purpose. The word 'ox' was once a general term used, but like with the term "cows," to a domesticated bovine regardless of age, gender, breed, type, or draft purposes.
   • Calf (plural: Calves): an immature bovine (male and female) that is reliant on milk from its dam or from a bottle in lodge to survive and grow. A dogie is known as such from birth to effectually ten months of age.
   • Bull calf: an immature intact male person bovine (since all males are built-in with testes) that is reliant on milk from his dam or a bottle for growth and survival.
   • Steer calf: an immature male bovine that has been castrated a few days to a couple months after nascence, and is reliant on milk from his dam or a bottle for growth and survival.
   • Heifer calf: an immature female bovine that is reliant on milk from her dam or a canteen for growth and survival.
   • Freemartin: an infertile or sterile heifer or heifer calf. Such infertility is a issue of beingness maternally twinned with a bull calf and whose placental tissues were shared in the womb. During the offset trimester, reproductive organs start to form and sexual hormones begin to be produced in the fetus. When male person and female fetal calves are twinned together, the testosterone produced by the male inhibits estrogen production in the female. This results in abnormal, underdeveloped or hermaphroditic reproductive organs in the female fetus. This is not so for the male. Freemartins are sometimes referred to as "hermaphrodites" if they are born with reproductive organs of both genders. As a consequence, this type of freemartins tend to develop secondary male sexual characteristics (muscular crest over neck, wide forehead, etc.) upon reaching puberty.
   • Cattle: general plural term for more than one bovine
   • Cattlebeast/bovine/animal: a singular term for a bovine whose gender cannot be determined, peculiarly when viewed at a distance. Most people like to refer to a bovine of unknown (or "unknown") gender as a "cow," simply because it is a much more well-known and popular term to utilize than "bovine" or "cattle animal." This, still, is often not the case effectually experienced cattlemen and cattle women or "ranchers" (as some like to call them) who never utilize the term "cow" when referring to a bovine that is annihilation but a cow. "Animal," "critter," "creature," or any other term, fibroid or not, are most ofttimes used over the colloquial word "cow." !

2. ii

   Sympathize the myths surrounding the ability of being able to distinguish the sexual practice or gender of a bovine.

   • Only bulls are horned; cows are polled: This is a myth. The reality is that both sexes (or genders) can exist horned and/or polled. If you are relying on whether a bovine is horned or non as an indication of the sexual activity (male or female person) or gender of the animal, please remember that this is the least reliable means of telling whether that bovine is either a cow or a bull. The best way to tell if a moo-cow is a cow and a bull is a balderdash is to look between the hind legs for presence of an udder or a scrotum, respectively.^[2]
   • Bulls are solid coloured (often brownish) individuals, whereas cows are just black and white: This is also a myth. Bulls are not primarily solid coloured, nor are cows primarily blackness and white. Quite frankly, the colouration can exist, and very often is ,vice versa: Purebred Holstein, Holstein-Freisian and Freisian bulls are e'er blackness and white only like their female counterparts, and many cows, both dairy (such as with Jersey, Brown Swiss, Guernsey cows) and beef (including Gelbvieh, Limousin, Red Angus, Reddish Brangus, Santa Gertrudis and fullblood Simmental cows) are predominantly brown or red. There are quite a number of breeds in the world that have black and white bulls and cows: the Holstein breed is just one of them, and happens to exist the most pop and well-known of these breeds. The aforementioned goes for solid-brown or ruby-red cattle: Many commercial and hybrid beef cattle are often institute to be solid scarlet or brown.
     • Every bit a affair of fact, bulls and cows (not to mention steers, calves and heifers) tin be any colour except pink, regal, light-green and blueish. They tin can be white, brownish, black, yellow, orange, red, gray, and whatsoever variation (often with white) of any of these colours, including roan, speckled, patchy, pointed, white-faced, dorsal-striped or white-tailed. Belgian Blue cattle, for case, are not named because they are truly bluish, but considering they are often a bluish-roan colouration that makes them appear smokey-blue due to the mix of black and white hairs in the hair coat of this breed.

   Advertisement

3. 3

   Be aware of the anatomical and physiological differences betwixt each type of bovine. These differences are as follows:

   • Cows: The best way to tell if a bovine or cattle-beast is indeed a cow is to look between the hind legs and see if an udder is present. An udder is a pink handbag-similar organ that has iv teats (cylindrical "knobs" that hang down from the udder) that generates milk for a young calf to drink.^[3] Cows you will see may have a calf at their side, except for most dairy cows or beef cows that have but come off from being weaned from their calves. Cows typically are shine from the head all the way down to the tailhead, with no shoulder crests (similar bulls have) and not as much muscling around the shoulders and hips like bulls do. Bos indicus cows (those that accept the loose pare and long floppy ears) accept a hump on their shoulders, but information technology is much less divers than that in bulls of the same species of bovine. If yous wait under the tail (if you can't you tin come across it when the tail is swishing flies away or for some reason or other, is held to the side), you will see a slit with a prepuce hanging down from it. This is where the vulva is located, the area where cows (and heifers) urinate from, accept the penis of bulls to be bred, and where their calves are born from. All cows have this, and information technology is a bit more defined and larger in cows than in heifers. Vulvae are located below the anus.
   • Bulls: Bulls are typically massive beasts. When they are amid the cowherd, information technology's pretty piece of cake to pick out the bull among the herd because of his larger size and masculinity in comparing to the more than feminine-looking cows or heifers that he is with. Not all bulls have horns. The just fashion y'all are really going to tell if it's a bull or not is to look to see if there is a large football game-shaped sac hanging downward between his hind legs. This is relatively like shooting fish in a barrel to see when you are getting a side-view of him (except when the hind leg nearest to you is shifted frontward and not dorsum), when you lot're behind him, and when he's walking. They also take a sheath or hairy prepuce on their underline (right in the heart of the belly and parallel to the basis; this area is called the navel) where their penis is housed. Near sheaths are more than defined in bulls than in steers, and a lot of bulls may have a pink fleshy protrusion being exposed from the sheath. That is the terminate of their penis.^[4] Cows and heifers do not take this sheath; some may have some loose peel hanging from the same area, but others will non have this. Bulls typically have a large, very muscular crest over their necks or shoulders (with Bos taurus cattle similar Angus, Simmental, or Texas Longhorn, it is found on the neck), and are typically very muscular on their shoulders, necks and their hind quarters than cows are. Most volition have a large, blocky appearance, with their front end and hind legs wider set (held farther apart) than cows, due to the muscling in the chest and shoulders. In the Bos indicus breeds, bulls typically have a sphere-shaped hump over their shoulders, much more defined and pronounced in bulls than in cows.
   • Steers: Steers have like conformational qualities every bit bulls do, except that they lack that testicular sac between their legs and their navel or sheath is much less defined. Even so, steers however retain the pilus hanging down from the middle of their belly, and this is, similar bulls, where their penis is housed and where they urinate from. This fiddling pilus is pretty much the but fashion to tell if this fauna you are looking at is a steer. Steers typically appear more feminine than bulls practice, defective the characteristic muscular hump and depth over the neck and shoulders. Sometimes, when steers and heifers are living together, the only style to tell if the animate being you are looking at is a steer is that the vulva, nowadays merely in heifers and cows, is absent. If there's cypher else under the tail except the anus, and said beast has no testes, so it's a steer. Steers are not born as steers, they are born as balderdash calves and are fabricated into steers by the process of castration.
   • Heifers: These are typically young females that a) were born as females (frequently called heifer calves) and b) retain female characteristics like cows do. Heifers are typically younger than cows, and often, to an experienced cattle person, a heifer or a first-calf heifer can be easily distinguished by noticing the youth of the animal and her size in relation to older more mature cows. These types of cattle are unremarkably ones that are withal growing past when they have their showtime calf, and accomplish full maturity by the fourth dimension they are 3 or 4 years of historic period. Heifers have no sac between their legs, nor practise they have the sheath and little pilus hanging down typical of bulls and steers. They take most no udder, but little teats that are hard to see between the dorsum legs except if you are kneeling downwards close beside her. They have a vulva underneath the tail (which is beneath the anus), but it is smaller and a niggling less divers than in mature cows. The udder and vulva increase in size both when the heifer, that has been bred, is about to calve. Even then, the udder is typically smaller in heifers than in cows.

4. four

   Go visit a farm or ranch to larn the anatomical differences every bit described above. This will assistance yous learn to know what to expect for and how to properly distinguish the difference betwixt bulls, cows, steers and heifers.

   • When walking forth the argue or with the cattle, be calm and quiet. Don't get excited, tense or fearful, around them, and if they come up upwardly to you, don't exist alarmed every bit they are naturally curious animals. If yous find you are getting tense or afraid, walk out of the pasture or corral to where they tin can't go, and effort to relax.
     • Beware of those that paw the globe at you, throw their heads effectually at y'all, approach you aggressively, growl at you, or wrinkle their olfactory organ at y'all. But those that back away from you or simply like to follow you are those that a) respect your space and accept you every bit The Dominate, and b) simply similar human companionship and think you accept treats for them, respectively.^[5]
   • If you cannot visit a farm or ranch, find pictures on the Internet to aid you larn the differences. You tin exercise an image search through your favorite search engine, or look at pictures posted past other cattlemen and -women that frequent various public cattle or livestock forums, such as CattleToday.com or Backyardherds.com.

Advertisement

Add New Question

• Question

  What breed of bull might be all black and scurred?

  

  Angus. The scurs are very probable to come from some brood that had horns that was used to "breed up" a supposedly "airtight-volume" breed, such as Bailiwick of jersey or Shorthorn, or even another continental breed to encourage bigger and blacker cattle.

• Question

  For a dogie to go weaned, how long does it potable from mum or be bottle fed?

  

  Calves weaned off their dam are typically vi months one-time (though they tin can range from 4 to x months old), and calves weaned off the bottle are typically ii to 3 months sometime.

• Question

  How may calves tin can one cow have in her lifetime?

  

  If a cow lived to fifteen years onetime, she could take had thirteen calves.

• Question

  Tin can I use a freemartin calf as a ways of detecting estrus? If so, should I treat it with hormones?

  

  Non a freemartin dogie, though a heifer may be a decent thought. There'south no real need to treat with hormones (merely talk to your veterinarian to see what they say), considering she volition notwithstanding be able to find heat and ride those in heat like whatsoever female person bovine with no bull present will. Gomer bulls (bulls made sterile) accept a halter with a chalk mentum ball on to mark cows and heifers that are in estrus, then you can use that on the freemartin. If the freemartin is a legitimate hermaphrodite, that'south an even greater use for rut detection.

• Question

  If a bull has been knife-castrated, can the steer retain a four - v" sac at 5 months?

  

  The sac is just the scrotum, and will eventually shrink (if the castration was done right) so that the fluid will not accumulate in the sac, but run out. And so yep, it's normal for the steer to have what's called a "cod" remaining post-castration.

• Question

  What age generally are heifers when they calve?

  

  Nigh heifers are about 2 years old when they calve.

• Question

  What happens to brand a calf exist built-in a heifer?

  

  Luck, really. The sperm jail cell with the Ten chromosome buries itself beginning into the ovum of the moo-cow. Like with humans, the female bovine has two Ten sex chromosomes, and the male has an X and a Y chromosome. Whether the calf ends up being male or female depends on which sperm cell (and there's a a multitude of these haploid X vs. Y sex cells) gets to the egg (ovum) first.

• Question

  Exercise both male and female cows have horns?

  

  Yes. Regardless of the breed, both male and female cattle are capable of having horns. What determines presence of horns is genetics. Horns are deemed a recessive gene, and polled (naturally hornless) dominant, meaning that if the polled gene is present in the parents, then the offspring accept a significant chance of existence horned too. The gene for horns is not sex-linked like in cervids (deer, elk, moose) or in antelope.

• Question

  How does a male bovine become a steer?

  

  Humans accept to castrate him (surgically remove the testicles) some time after nascency. In that location's no other natural way information technology tin exist done.

• Question

  What makes beef and so tough that you can hardly eat information technology?

  

  Age of the creature, genetics, and drought weather can crusade the toughness of muscle mass. So can over-cooking.

See more answers

Ask a Question

200 characters left

Include your email address to become a message when this question is answered.

Submit

Advertising

• Always call up to expect between the legs, nether the tail or at the underbelly if you are not sure whether an beast is a moo-cow, a balderdash, a heifer or a steer.

• Ofttimes it's better to study pictures that are posted in a book, a mag or online than going out to a farm or ranch to look at someone's cattle. That way you have a better chance to study the photo equally long as you want, and don't take to chase or follow an animal around that gets tired of you staring at it all solar day.

• A rule of thumb to remember is that female cattle are cows and heifers, and male cattle are bulls and steers.

Advertisement

• Accept note that heifers and steers can exist difficult to tell apart, especially if they are put together in the same corral or pasture.

• Be very careful around bulls and cows with calves. Bulls and cows with calves are typically dangerous animals, especially if teased or provoked, or if they sense y'all are a danger to their cow herd or calf. Often information technology is best to view a balderdash or cow with calf on the other side the fence or in your vehicle if the farm y'all are seeing is beside a route.

Ad

Near This Article

Thanks to all authors for creating a page that has been read one,029,302 times.

Did this article assist you?

polingfromete.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.wikihow.com/Tell-the-Difference-Between-Bulls,-Cows,-Steers-and-Heifers

Share this post