What Do You Call The Boy Cows?

Did you know that boy cows aren’t called cows at all? What about the babies? Baby cows have different names if they are boys or girls, too!

What Do You Call The Boy Cows?

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We just call them “cows” all the time, but unless you’re talking about more than one adult female bovine, that’s not really right. When you have a group of bovines of mixed genders and ages, they are called cattle. Each gender and age group has a different name.

It can get a little bit confusing, especially when we’re talking about the girls. So let’s start with the easy ones.

Cow

A cow is a female, after she has given birth to her first baby. This usually happens around the time she turns 2 years old. We keep our cows until they have trouble getting pregnant or trouble raising a calf (for example, if they don’t make enough milk or reject a calf). The oldest cow on our farm is 15 years old, and she still raises a beautiful calf!

Calf

A calf is a baby bovine. The word “calf” is used for both the boys and girls. They are considered to be calves until they turn one year old. After they are weaned from milk (around 4-6 months for beef calves, sooner for dairy calves) they can be called weanlings. But most of the time they are still called calves.

Bull

A bull is a boy bovine, at any age. As long as he has not been castrated (neutered), he is still a bull.

Steer

A steer is a boy bovine who has been castrated. He can’t make babies anymore. Statistically, a farm should have roughly 50% bull calves and 50% girl calves born every year. This year, we had over 80% bull calves! We castrated all but one of them, so now we have one bull calf, and a bunch of steer calves.

Heifer

A heifer is a female bovine from the time she is born, until the time she has her first calf. Then she is a cow. Once the heifer is pregnant (shortly after she turns one year old), she is called a first-calf heifer. She’ll keep that name until she has the calf, then she’ll be called a cow.

We usually keep our heifer calves on our farm. They are called replacement heifers, because they are going to be replacing an older cow who will be sold, or because they are staying so we can grow our herd size.

Right now, there are cows, calves, 2 bulls, steers, and one heifer calf in my backyard. What’s in yours?

Enjoy!

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