Cattle: Species, Domestication and Economy

In this article we will discuss about Cattle:- 1. Introduction to Cattle 2. Species of Cattle 3. Genome 4. Terminology 5. Origin 6. Physical Features 7. Domestication and Husbandry 8. Environmental Impact 9. Importance in Religion, Tradition and Folklore 10. Population 11. Economy.

Introduction to Cattle:

Cattle (colloquially cows) are the most common type of large domesticated ungulates. They are the most widespread species of the genus Bos, and are scientifically called as Bos primigenius.

Cattle are raised as livestock for meat (beef and veal), as dairy animals for milk and other dairy products, and as draft animals (pulling carts, ploughs and the likes). Other products include leather and dung for manure or fuel. It is estimated that there are 1.3 billion cattle in the world today. In 2009, cattle became the first livestock animal to have its genome mapped.

Species of Cattle:

Cattle were originally identified by Carolus Linnaeus as three separate species. These were Bos taurus, the European or “taurine” cattle (including similar types from Africa and Asia); Bos indicus, the zebu; and the extinct Bos primigenius, the aurochs.

The aurochs is ancestral to both zebu and taurine cattle. Recently these three have increasingly been grouped as one species, with Bos primigenius taurus, Bos primigenius indicus and Bos primigenius primigenius as the subspecies.

Complicating the matter is the ability of cattle to interbreed with other closely related species. Hybrid individuals and even breeds exist, not only between taurine cattle and zebu but also between one or both of these and some other members of the genus Bos: yak (called a dzo or “yattle”), banteng and gaur. Hybrids can also occur between taurine cattle and either species of bison, which some authors consider to be in the genus Bos as well.

 

The aurochs originally ranged throughout Europe, North Africa, and much of Asia. In historical times its range became restricted to Europe, and the last known individual died in Masovia, Poland in around 1627. Breeders have attempted to recreate cattle of similar appearance as aurochs by crossing traditional types of domesticated cattle, creating the Heck cattle breed.

Cattle Genome:

In the April 24, 2009 edition of the journal Science, it was reported that a team of researchers led by the National Institutes of Health and the U.S. Department of Agriculture has mapped the bovine genome. The scientists found that cattle have approximately 22,000 genes, and 80 per cent of their genes are shared with humans.

They have approximately 1,000 genes which they share with dogs and rodents that are not found in humans. Using this bovine “HapMap”, resear­chers can track the differences between the breeds that affect the quality of meat and milk yields.

Terminology of Cattle:

In general, the same terminologies are used to describe the cattle in different parts of the world but with minor differences in the definitions. The termino­logy described here contrasts the differences in defi­nition between the United Kingdom and other British influenced parts of the world such as Canada, Aus­tralia, New Zealand, Ireland, and the United States.

1. An intact (i.e., not castrated) adult male is called a bull. A wild, young, unmarked bull is known as a micky in Australia. An unbranded bovine of either sex is called a “maverick” in the USA and Canada.

2. An adult female that has had a calf (or two, depending on regional usage) is a cow. A young female before she has had a calf of her own and is under three years of age is called a heifer (pronounced as “heffer”). A young female that has had only one calf is occasionally called a first-calf heifer.

3. Young cattle of both sexes are called calves until they are weaned, then they are called weaners until they are a year old in some areas; in other areas, particularly with male beef cattle, they may be known as feeder-calves or simply feeders. They are referred to as yearlings or stirks when they are of one and two years of age.

4. A castrated male is called a steer in the United States, and older steers are often called bullocks in other parts of the world; although in North America this term refers to a young bull. Piker bullocks are micky bulls that were caught, castrated and then later lost. In Australia, the term “Japanese ox” is used for grain fed steers in the weight range of 500 to 650 kg that are destined for the Japanese meat trade.

In North America, draft cattle under four years old are called working steers. Improper or late castration on a bull results in it becoming a coarse steer known as a stag in Australia, Canada and New Zealand. In some countries an incompletely castrated male is known as a rig.

5. A castrated male (occasionally a female or in some areas a bull) kept for draft purposes is called an ox (plural oxen); “ox” may also be used to refer to some carcase products from any adult cattle, such as ox-hide, ox-blood or ox- liver.

6. In all cattle species, a female that is the twin of a bull usually becomes an infertile partial intersex, and is a freemartin.

7. Neat (horned oxen, from which neat foot oil is derived), beef (young ox) and beefing (young animal fit for slaughtering) are obsolete terms, although poll, pollard or polled cattle are still terms in use for naturally hornless animals, or in some areas also for those that have been disbudded.

8. Cattle raised for human consumption are called beef cattle. Within the beef cattle industry in parts of the United States, the older term beef (plural beeves) is still used to refer to an animal of either gender. Some Australian. Canadian, New Zealand and British people use the term beast, especially for single animals when the gender is unknown.

9. Cattle of certain breeds, bred specifically for milk production, are called milking or dairy cattle’, a cow kept to provide milk for one family may be called a house cow.

10. The adjective applying to cattle in general is usually bovine. The terms “bull”, “cow” and “calf’ are also used by extension to denote the gender or age of other large animals, including whales, hippopotamuses, camels, elk and elephants.

Oxen:

Oxen (singular ox) are large and heavy set breeds of Bos taurus cattle trained as draft animals. Often they are adult, castrated males. Oxen are used for ploughing, transport, hauling cargo, grain-grinding by trampling or by powering machines, irrigation by powering pumps and wagon drawing. Oxen were commonly used to skid logs in forests. These are most often used in pair, for light work such as carting.

An ox is nothing more than a mature bovine with an “education”. Ox trainers favour larger breeds for their ability to do more work and for their intelligence. As they are larger animals, the typical ox is the male of a breed, rather than the smaller female. Females are potentially more useful producing calves and milk.

Ox is also used for various cattle products, irrespe­ctive of age, sex or training of the beast – for example, ox-blood, ox-liver, ox-kidney, ox-heart, ox-hide, and ox-tail.

Singular Terminology Dilemma:

Cattle can only be used in the plural and not in the singular. Thus one may refer to “three cattle” or “some cattle”, but not “one cattle”. There is no uni­versally used singular form in modern English of “cattle”, other than the sex- and age-specific terms such as cow, bull, steer and heifer.

Historically, “oxen” was a non-gender-specific term for adult cattle, but generally this is now used only for draft cattle, especially adult castrated males. The term is also incorporated into the names of other species such as the musk ox and “grunting ox” (yak), and is used in some areas to describe certain cattle products such as ox-hide and ox-tail.

Other Terminology:

Cows of certain breeds that are kept for the milk they give, are called “dairy cows” or “milking cows” (formerly “milch cows” – “milch” was pronounced as “milk”). Most young male offspring of dairy cows are sold for veal, and may be referred to as veal calves.

The term “dogies” is used to describe orphaned calves in the context of ranch work in the American west. Other obsolete terms for cattle include “neat” (this use survives in “neat’s-foot oil”, extracted from the feet and legs of cattle), and “beefing” (young animal fit for slaughter).

Origin of the Word ‘Cattle’:

Cattle did not originate as the term for bovine animals. It was borrowed from Old French catel, which itself came from Latin caput, i.e., head, and originally meant movable property, especially live­stock of any kind. The word is closely related to “chattel” (a unit of personal property) and “capital” in the economic sense.

In older English sources such as the King James Version of the Bible, “cattle” refers to livestock, as opposed to “deer” which refers to wildlife. “Wild cattle” may refer to feral cattle or to undomesticated species of the genus Bos. Today, the modern meaning of “cattle”, without any other qualifier, is usually restricted to domesticated bovines.

Physical Features of Cattle:

I. Cattle have one stomach with four compartments, called as “ruminant stomach”. Cattle sometimes consume metal objects which are deposited in the reticulum chamber of the stomach and irritation from the metal objects causes “hardware disease”.

II. The gestation period for a cow is nine months. A newborn calf weighs 25 to 45 kilograms. The world record for the heaviest bull was 1,740 kilograms, a Chianina named Donetto, when he was exhibited at the Arezzo show in Italy in 1955.

The heaviest steer was eight year old ‘Old Ben’, a Shorthorn/Hereford cross weighing 2,140 kilograms in 1910. Steers are generally killed before reaching 750 kilograms. Bre­eding stock usually live about 15 years (occasionally as many as 25 years).

III. A common misconception about cattle (parti­cularly bulls) is that they are enraged by the color red (something provocative is often said to be “like a red flag to a bull”). This is incorrect, as cattle are red- green colour-blind. The myth arose from the use of red capes in the sport of bullfighting; in fact, two different capes are used.

The capote is a large, flowing cape that is magenta and yellow. The more famous muleta is the smaller, red cape, used exclusively for the final, fatal segment of the fight. It is not the colour of the cape that angers the bull, but rather the movement of the fabric that irritates the bull and incites it to charge.

IV. Although cattle have red and green colour rece­ptors in the cone cells of their retina, they cannot dist­inguish red from green. Thus, they are dichromatic, the same as most other mammals (including dogs, cats, horses and up to ten per cent of human males). They are able to distinguish some colours, particularly blue from yellow, in the same way as most other mammals.

Domestication and Husbandry of Cattle:

Cattle occupy a unique role in human history, domesticated since the early Neolithic period. They are raised for meat (beef cattle), dairy products and hides. They are also used as draft animals and in certain sports. Some consider cattle the oldest form of wealth, and cattle raiding consequently one of the earliest forms of theft.

Cattle are often raised by allowing herds to graze on the grasses of large tracts of rangeland. The most common interactions with cattle involve daily feeding, cleaning and milking. Many routine husbandry prac­tices involve ear tagging, dehorning, loading, medical operations, vaccinations and hoof care, as well as training for agricultural shows and preparations.

There are also some cultural differences in working with cattle — the cattle husbandry of Fulani men (Berber people of North Africa) rests on behavioural techni­ques, whereas in Europe cattle are controlled primarily by physical means like fences. Breeders use cattle husbandry to reduce Mycobacterium bovis infection susceptibility by selective breeding and maintaining herd health to avoid concurrent diseases.

Cattle are farmed for beef, veal, dairy, leather and they are less commonly used for conservation grazing, simply to maintain grassland for wildlife. Depending on the breed, cattle can survive on hill grazing, heaths, marshes, moors and semi-desert.

Modern cows are more commercial than older breeds and having become more specialized, are less versatile. For this reason many smaller farmers still favour old breeds, like the dairy breed of cattle Jersey.

In Portugal, Spain, Southern France and some Latin American countries, bulls are used in the activity of bullfighting; a similar activity, Jallikattu, is seen in South India; in many other countries this is illegal. Other activities such as bull riding are seen as part of a rodeo, especially in North America.

Bull-leaping, a central ritual in Bronze Age Minoan culture, still exists in south-western France. In modern times, cattle are also entered into agricultural competitions. These competitions can involve live cattle or cattle carcasses in hoof and hook events.

In terms of food intake by humans, consumption of cattle meat is less efficient than of grain or vegetables with regard to land use. Cattle grazing consume more area than any other agricultural production.

Environmental Impact of Cattle:

In 2009, a United Nations report from the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) states that cattle farming are “responsible for 18% of greenhouse gases”. The production of cattle to feed and other purposes, stresses ecosystems around the world, and is assessed to be one of the top three environmental problems in the world on a local to global scale.

The report of FAO, entitled Livestock’s Long Shadow, also surveys the environmental damage from sheep, chickens, pigs and goats. But in almost every case, the world’s 1.5 billion cattle are cited as the greatest adverse impact loader with respect to climate change as well as species extinction.

The report concludes that, unless changes are made, the massive damage reckoned to be due to livestock may become more than double by 2050, as demand for meat increases.

Some microbes respire in the cattle gut by an anae­robic process, known as methanogenesis (producing the gas methane). Cattle emit a large volume of me­thane, 95% of it through eructation or burping, not flatulence.

As the carbon in the methane comes from the digestion of vegetation produced by photo­synthesis, its release into the air by this process would normally be considered harmless, because there is no net increase in carbon in the atmosphere.

It is removed as carbon dioxide from the air by photosynthesis and returned to it as methane. Methane is a more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide, having a warming effect 23 to 50 times greater.

A little increase in methane concentration in the atmosphere exerts a potentially significant contribution to global warming. Research is underway on methods of reducing this source of methane, by the use of dietary supplements, or treatments to reduce the proportion of methanogenetic microbes, perhaps by vaccination.

Cattle are fed with a concentrated high-corn diet which produces rapid weight gain, but this has side effects which include increased acidity in the digestive system. When improperly handled, manure and other by-products of concentrated agriculture also have environmental consequences.

Grazing by cattle at low intensities can create a favourable environment for native herbs and forbs; however, in most world regions cattle are redu­cing biodiversity due to overgrazing driven by food demands by an expanding human population.

Importance of Cattle in Religion, Traditions and Folklore:

Hindu Tradition:

Cows are venerated within the Hindu religion of India. According to Vedic scriptures they are to be treated with the same respect ‘as one’s mother’ because of the milk they provide; “The cow is my mother”, as says the Mahabharata.

They appear in numerous stories from the Puranas and Vedas. The deity Krishna was brought up in a family of cow-herders, and given the name Govinda (protector of the cows). Also Shiva is traditionally said to ride on the back of a bull, named Nandi.

In ancient rural India every household had a few cows which provided a constant supply of milk and a few bulls that helped as draft animals. Conservative Hindus, even though they might eat meat of other animals, almost always abstain from beef and the slaughter of cows is considered a heinous sin in mainstream orthodox Hinduism.

Slaughter of cows (including oxen, bulls and calves) is forbidden by law in most of the states of the Indian Union. Ille­gal slaughter of cows in India is sometimes the reason for religious riots between Hindus and Muslims.

Other traditions:

1. The Evangelist St. Luke is depicted as an ox in Christian art.

2. In Judaism, as described in Numbers 19:2, the ashes of a sacrificed unblemished red heifer that has never been yoked can be used for ritual purification of people who came into contact with a corpse.

3. The ox is one of the 12-year cycles of animals which appear in the Chinese zodiac related to the Chinese calendar.

4. The constellation Taurus represents a bull.

5. An apocryphal story has it that a cow started the Great Chicago Fire by kicking over a kerosene lamp. Michael Ahern, the reporter who created the cow story, admitted in 1893 that he had fabricated it for more colourful copy.

6. The first known law requiring branding in North America was enacted on February 5, 1644 in Connecticut. It said that all cattle and pigs should have a registered brand or earmark by May 1, 1644.

7. The akabeko (redcow) is a traditional toy from the Aizu region of Japan that is thought to ward off illness.

8. The Maasai tribe of East Africa traditionally believes that all cows on earth are the God-given property of the Maasai.

In heraldry:

Cattle are typically represented in heraldry by the bull. See Fig. 9.1.

Population of Cattle:

The world cattle population is estimated to be about 1.3 billion as per 2010 data. India is the nation with the largest number of cattle.

Economy of Cattle:

Cattle today are the basis of a multi-billion dollar industry worldwide. The international trade in beef for 2000 was over $30 billion and represented only 23 per cent of world beef production. The production of milk, which is also made into cheese, butter, yogurt and other dairy products, is comparable in economic size to beef production.

All these products provide an important part of the food supply for many of the world’s people. Cattle hides, used for leather to make shoes, couches and clothing, are another wide­spread product. Cattle remain broadly used as draft animals in many developing countries like India.