May is beef month so naturally all #farmfridaytpstyle posts will be all about the cattle! Anything you want to know? Let us know in the comments!
#1. Cows are only the females and are usually only referred to as a cow if she has had 3 or more calves. There are also heifers (young female), first calf heifer (female that just had her first calf), second calf heifer (female that had her second calf), then they graduate to being a cow. Bulls are the males that do the breeding. Steers have been castrated (similar to neutering a dog or cat).
#2. Cattle only have teeth on the bottom. They use their very long tongues to pull the grass in (like a lasso) then chew with bottom teeth and pressing it against the hard top palette of their mouth. I can remember when I was little, maybe 4-5 years old, having a bottle calf (baby that doesn’t have a mother for one reason or other) and seeing that it only had teeth on the bottom. I told my mom, “Look this calf’s top teeth haven’t grown in yet!” She then told me that they only have teeth on the bottom! I was amazed and spent a lot of time looking in their mouth’s until I was convinced that she was indeed right!
#3. Cattle have four stomachs! The rumen is the largest and can hold up to 50 pounds of food. Grass is ingested and stored here until the cattle burp it back up and chew their cud.
#4. Cattle spend roughly 8 hours a day eating, 8 hours a day chewing their cud and 8 hours a day sleeping. When it is hot outside, they spend their early mornings and late evenings out grazing, where there isn’t shade. During the heat of the day, they lay under shade trees and chew their cud (burping back up their grass and re-chewing it! YUM!)
#5. Cattle outnumber people in 9 states (South Dakota, Nebraska, Montana, North Dakota, Wyoming, Kansas, Idaho, Iowa and Oklahoma).
#6. Cows have calves about once per year. They aren’t bred for the first time until around 14-15 months old and calve when they are around 2 years old, then have a calf once a year.
#7. Cattle are herd animals. If one isn’t near the herd, chances are they are sick, giving birth or have a new baby. On that note, cattle make very great babysitters. They often leave one to two cows with the baby calves all in a group and go off to eat/graze and drink before returning to the them.
#8. Cattle are prey animals. By observing cattle, you can learn a lot about your situation. They can smell and hear things WAY sooner than a human can. If cattle are nervous, there is normally a good reason to be!
#9. It is illegal to feed cows meat of any sort, so all cattle are vegetarian-fed!
#10. All meat is antibiotic free! Ranchers take great care to follow the withdraw labels on any medicine that is given. Once the animal is harvested, there are also tests done to ensure that it is antibiotic free.
#11. And, a bonus fact just for fun! Ranchers care for animals. Farmers grow crops. But they are often used interchangeably.
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~Matt & Kelsey