I have seen oxen that look like Herfords, brown with a bald face and very stocky. I have also seen some that look more like Holsteins, rangy build with black and white. So, are oxen a breed of cattle like Holsteins and Herfords for example or just what? Seems to me as well that most cattle breeds are a specific color and I have seen different colored oxen.
From Random House
My nutrition professor told us that they’re the same animal (genetically) as a bull and steer, just castrated much younger than a steer. Is that true? My mental picture of the two animals seems more different than the age being the only factor, but perhaps the steer and oxen I’ve seen had different types of cows for mothers.
There seems to be 2 senses of the word “ox” (of which “oxen” is of course the plural), based on Dictionary.com, Cambridge dictionaries online and Random House:
-
Any member of the genus Bos (and possibly other closely-related animals of the subfamily Bovidae), of either sex (includes domestic cows, yaks, etc.)
-
A castrated (male) member of one of the above-mentioned species, particularly of Bos taurus (domestic cattle).
Dictionary.com has a good set of definitions: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=ox
By the way…What do you call a single adult member of the species that chews its cud and goes “moo”?
We call an adult male a “bull”, a castrated male a “steer”, an adult female a “cow”, an young female a “heifer”, an imature one a “calf”, and collectively we call them “cattle”.
But when you see one of them on the other side of a large field and you can’t determine its sex or age, what do you call it?
Most animals have a way of refering to the singlular animal. We call the male animal that you ride a “stallion”, a female a “mare”, but we call an undifferentiated one a “horse”. What is the equivilant for cattle?
My vote goes for *Steakosaurus *
psst… scroll down to the bottom
We used to band our calves when they were two days old, I don’t know how much earlier you could do it. I don’t think that’s the difference.
Terminology varies and often interchangeable but in our context a steer grows into an ox. The age of castration doesn’t really come into it (as previously noted ox is gender neutral).
Ox tended to be used as a term for older (sometimes a decade or more) drought animals, steers tended to be slaughtered for meat under 2yo. Much above 24 months the beast is mature and the meat becomes tougher and mainly suited for boned and ground beef.
In Australia the term bullock was used in preference to ox. Steers over 2yo were referred to as bullocks. Bullock teams were draught animals that pulled drays or (totally inconsistently) ox carts. However, relatively recently our export standard beef animal became refered to as “Jap Ox” (being destined for the Japanese meat trade).
Well, apparently there isn’t such a term in English. Same situation for the domestic fowl, right? I would argue, though, that “cow” and “chicken” have pretty much become (or are well on their way to becoming) the standard terms in colloquial American speech for these animals, regardless of sex or age.
Technically I suppose one would refer to the singular of “cattle” by the archaic word “kine” (as in “do not bind the mouth of the kine that thredeth out the grain”), but to do so would mark you as totally pedantic.
I believe the general term for a cow or bull is a bovine.
“Kine,” like “cattle,” is a collective word. You can’t have one kine any more than you can have one cattle. “Bovine” – like “ovine,” “porcine,” “hirsine,” “caprine,” “leporine,” “equine,” “cervine,” etc. – is an adjective, not a noun.
Urg. You’re right.
So bullocks have no bollocks?
And “chicken” is the gender-neutral term. Male chickens are roosters or cocks, and female chickens are hens. You might try “goose” for a missing neutral, though.
One the other side of the coin, you can argue that “dog” is specifically male, with “bitch” being female. Or if you take “dog” to be neutral, then the male-specific term is missing.
I’m arguing that that’s the case now. But that’s not the traditional definition of “chicken,” which is specifically tied to the age of the bird.
Definition from dictionary.com:
- The mature female of cattle of the genus Bos.
- The mature female of other large animals, such as whales, elephants, or moose.
- A domesticated bovine of either sex or any age.
The linked column also includes this quote by Robin NiDana: Cow may be the last word left which means both “female animal” and “generic animal.” She obviously didn’t think of “duck”, which is used to mean a mallard, teal, etc., of either sex, as well as the female counterpart of a drake.
Among dog breeders, the term used for a male is “stud”. Sometimes specifically as “stud-dog”, or offering “stud service”, or advertising a specific male dog as standing “at stud to approved bitches”.
Interestingly, nearly the same terms are used in horse breeding, where stud is basically an informal synonym of stallion.
Neat.
(As in neat’s foot oil…)
Trinopus
Technically true I suppose, but I once asked the marketing manager of dairy operations for the nice folks at Purina (and something like a 5th generation dairy farmer himself) what the singular, non-gender specific term was and he said “a cattle.”