Cow

In everyday English, cow is used for any domestic cattle, but farmers use more precise words. Strictly speaking, a cow is an adult female that has had at least one calf. A heifer is a young female that has not yet had a calf; heifers are usually bred at about 15 months and become cows after calving. A bull is an adult male kept for breeding. A steer is a male castrated young and raised for beef, and an ox is a mature, castrated male trained to pull plows or carts, valued for its strength and calm temper. Young cattle of either sex are calves until they are weaned. The word cattle covers all of them and has no singular, which is why people end up saying cow for every animal. Domestic cattle belong to the genus Bos, together with yaks, gaur and banteng. Taurine cattle are usually named Bos taurus and zebu cattle Bos indicus, although many scientists treat them as two forms of one species, since their calves are fertile.

There are hundreds of cattle breeds, usually grouped by what they were bred for. The black and white Holstein Friesian, from the Netherlands and northern Germany, is the most common dairy cow in the world and gives the most milk. The small, fawn colored Jersey, from the island of Jersey in the English Channel, gives less milk but it is richer in fat and protein, and the Guernsey and Ayrshire are other classic dairy breeds. Beef breeds are built to grow muscle. The Angus, from Scotland, is naturally hornless and usually black; the Hereford, from England, is red with a white face; and the Belgian Blue is famous for its double muscling, caused by a mutation in a gene that normally limits muscle growth. Wagyu, meaning Japanese cattle, are known for the fat marbling of their meat, sold as Kobe or Matsusaka beef. There are also old local breeds such as the Texas Longhorn, and dual purpose breeds such as the Simmental, raised for both milk and meat.

Zebu cattle, Bos indicus, descend from the Indian aurochs, which was domesticated in South Asia, with early evidence from Mehrgarh in today's Pakistan. They are easy to recognize by the fleshy hump over the shoulders, the large, drooping ears and the loose fold of skin, called a dewlap, hanging under the neck. Those features suit hot climates: the extra skin helps them lose heat, they sweat more than European cattle, and they resist ticks and many tropical diseases. That is why zebu breeds dominate cattle farming in the tropics. The white Nelore, the backbone of Brazil's beef industry, takes its name from the Nellore district of Andhra Pradesh, in India, home of the Ongole cattle shipped to Brazil from the late nineteenth century. The Gir, from Gujarat, is a red and white dairy breed with a domed forehead and curled horns, and the Sahiwal, from Punjab, is one of South Asia's best milk breeds. The Brahman was developed in the United States from Indian zebu.

Highland cattle, or Highland coos as they are called in Scots, are among the most photographed cows in the world. They come from the Scottish Highlands and the islands of the Outer Hebrides, where they have lived for centuries in a cold, wet and windy climate with poor grazing. Their shaggy look comes from a double coat: a long, wavy outer coat that sheds rain and snow, and a soft, woolly undercoat that keeps them warm, so they can live outdoors all year. Both cows and bulls have long, wide horns, and the fringe over the eyes, called a dossan, helps protect them from wind and flies. They are usually red, but can also be black, yellow, white, dun or brindle. Highland cattle are slow growing and hardy, and they turn rough grazing that other breeds avoid into lean beef. The Highland Cattle Society was founded in 1884, and a group of Highland cattle is traditionally called a fold, after the stone shelters where they were once kept on winter nights.

Ankole cattle, also called Ankole Watusi, have some of the biggest horns of any cattle in the world. They belong to the Sanga group of African cattle, a mix of humpless and zebu ancestry that formed in Africa over thousands of years, and they are the traditional cattle of peoples of Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi, eastern Congo and Tanzania. Their name comes from the Ankole region of southwestern Uganda. The horns grow long and thick, often curving up into a lyre shape, and Guinness World Records lists a bull named CT Woodie with a horn circumference of 103.5 centimeters. The horns are full of blood vessels, and blood flowing through them is thought to help the animals lose heat. For many pastoral peoples, Ankole cattle are a measure of wealth and status rather than a source of meat, valued for their milk and for ceremonies. In Rwanda, the long horned Inyambo cattle of the old royal herds were trained for traditional dances and parades.

A cow has one stomach divided into four chambers: the rumen, the reticulum, the omasum and the abomasum. This system lets cattle live on grass, hay and other plants that most animals cannot digest. The rumen is by far the largest chamber and in an adult cow can hold well over 100 liters. It works like a fermentation tank full of bacteria, protozoa and fungi that break down cellulose, the tough fiber of plants, into fatty acids the cow uses for energy. A cow first swallows its food after chewing it only a little. Later, while resting, it brings balls of partly digested food, called cud, back into the mouth and chews them again slowly, spending around eight hours a day ruminating. Food then passes to the abomasum, the true stomach, which digests it with acids and enzymes. A side effect of fermentation is methane, a powerful greenhouse gas that cows mostly burp out, and scientists are testing feeds and breeding to reduce it.

Cows are social animals that evolved to live in herds, and they are more complex than their calm look suggests. A herd has a clear social order, built through pushing, head butting and threats, and once it is set most cows avoid fights by respecting it. Older cows often lead the group to grazing places and water. Cows also form preferred partnerships, grazing, resting and grooming more with certain companions, and studies have found that they show fewer signs of stress when kept with a familiar friend. A mother and her calf bond in the first hours after birth, and she recognizes its call and smell; in some herds several calves are left together in a group watched by one or two cows, like a nursery. Cows communicate with moos that vary between individuals and with body language such as ear position and tail movement. They have nearly panoramic vision and a keen sense of smell, and they can remember people who handled them well or badly.

For most people, the relationship with cattle is practical. Milk is the most important product for many families, drunk fresh or turned into butter, cheese, yogurt and ghee. A cow only produces milk after giving birth, so dairy cows have a calf about once a year. Yields vary hugely: high producing Holsteins on modern farms often give 25 to 30 liters a day, while traditional zebu cows in India or Africa give only a few liters. Beef is one of the most consumed meats in the world, and hides become leather. In many rural areas of Africa and Asia, oxen still pull plows and carts. Even dung is useful: it fertilizes fields, dried dung cakes are burned for cooking, and fresh dung mixed with mud is used to plaster floors and walls. In many pastoral societies of East Africa, cattle are the main form of wealth, used to pay bride price. At the same time, large scale cattle ranching is a major driver of deforestation in places such as the Amazon.

Few animals carry as much spiritual meaning as the cow does in Hinduism, which is where the English expression sacred cow comes from. The cow is a symbol of motherhood, generosity and nonviolence: like a mother, it gives milk that feeds people without asking anything in return. In Hindu scripture the goddess Kamadhenu, the wish granting cow, is the mother of all cows, and the god Krishna grew up as a cowherd and is often called Gopala, protector of cows. Milk, ghee and yogurt are used in rituals, and dried and fresh dung is used to purify floors and courtyards in many traditional homes. This reverence shapes daily life, laws and politics across much of South Asia. Most states of India ban or restrict the slaughter of cows, and goshalas, shelters for old cows, are found across the country. The respect also has practical roots: for thousands of years, cattle gave the milk, draft power and fuel rural families depended on, making a living cow worth far more than its meat.

The cow is the national animal of Nepal, named as such in the country's constitution, and Nepal's laws have long protected it. Killing a cow or an ox is a criminal offense under the Nepalese penal code, and under the old legal code it could bring a prison term of up to 12 years. In a country where most people are Hindu, the cow is also treated as a symbol of the goddess Lakshmi, who brings prosperity, and families care for their cows as part of the household. In cities like Kathmandu and in towns of the Terai, cows walk through streets and markets and often rest in the middle of busy roads while traffic moves carefully around them, something visitors rarely forget. Many of these street cows have owners and wander out during the day, while others were released when they stopped giving milk, a real problem for traffic and for the cows themselves. Choosing the cow over a wild animal shows how closely Nepal's identity is tied to farming and religion.

Tihar, also called Deepawali, is a five day festival of lights celebrated in Nepal and by Nepali speaking communities in India, usually in October or November. It is the second biggest festival in Nepal after Dashain, and its first days honor different animals: crows on the first day and dogs on the second. The third day begins with Gai Tihar, the day of the cow. In the morning families bathe their cows, place garlands of marigolds around their necks, mark their foreheads with red tika and offer them fruit, grain and sweets, thanking them for the milk and work they give the household. That evening comes Lakshmi Puja, when houses are lit with oil lamps and candles to welcome the goddess of wealth, whom the cow is believed to represent. On the fourth day many families also honor oxen in Goru Puja, linked to the story of Krishna lifting Govardhan hill to shelter the cowherds and their cattle from a storm.

All cattle descend from the aurochs, a huge wild ox that lived across Europe, Asia and North Africa and went extinct in 1627, when the last known animal died in Poland. The aurochs was domesticated at least twice. Around 10,500 years ago, early farmers in the Near East, in today's Turkey, Syria and Iraq, began keeping wild aurochs from a fairly small founding group, which gave rise to humpless taurine cattle. A separate domestication of the Indian aurochs in South Asia produced humped zebu cattle. African cattle began with taurine cattle from the Near East that later mixed with zebu arriving through East Africa, creating breeds such as the Sanga. In 1493 Christopher Columbus brought the first cattle to the Americas, where they later grew into the huge herds of Argentina, Brazil, Mexico and the United States. Over thousands of years people chose calmer animals, so modern cattle are much smaller than the aurochs, with shorter horns and a huge range of colors.