The truth about bovines

Well, blame my schedule I guess... I haven't written for some time. Life is busy and only going to get busier! Ryan and I and the fam went on a trip to Washington State to visit his family, many of which live in a little city called Cheney. While there, I learned how I have been lied to my entire life about a very important subject. Not only have these tales of falsehood come from books, movies, family and even TEACHERS, but they are ingrained in even the youngest of children. Hang on to your buttons... what I am about to reveal may be shocking to many of you.

Did you know a cow cannot be male? Yes, that is true. A cow is only female. I know I know... sounds fishy, but it is true. You may wonder how this is possibly correct when obviously more cows are produced all the time. (biology... 7th grade) However, I learned that in the species of bovines, female bovines are called cows. You milk them, they have babies. If you want a male bovine, you want a bull or steer. The difference between a bull and steer is that a steer is a fixed bull. (Meaning he can't reproduce) When ranchers (very different from farmers, but another story) have their fields of bovines, they have many cows so those cows can produce milk and make more cows, and only ONE bull. That is because at a ranch, bulls are very um... territorial and well - polygamy is practiced in those fields in abundance. The rest of the bovines that are born, kept, and male, are fixed so as to not encroach on the "king bull's" territory. Those are the source of meat we eat. (raised and then sold for hamburgers and steak and roasts - YUM!)

Another interesting fact - You can tell the type of cow and the milk it will give by the coloring of the cows. Now my in-laws explained this complicated system to me and the only thing I can remember is that holstein cows are black and white and they produce milk with higher cream content - used to make ice cream and stuff. But there are actually 3 kinds of cows that produce 3 different kinds of milk and are used for 3 different types of food - from the milk we drink to the ice cream we eat. And I asked what happens if there is a mixed breed (like only half holstein cow half another kind). That question obviously had never been asked before and after getting odd looks they told me that doesn't happen. Hey - why not? If you can have mutts and mixed breeds of all other animals, why not cows and steer? But I guess that doesn't happen in the world of bovines.

So I thought about this subject for a long time. Why do they call all bovines cows when we are little? Did I only learn about female bovines my entire life? Now that the knowledge has settled in, I was teaching nursery today and we were singing Old Mac Donald had a farm. I picked a 'bovine' (aka cow) to sing about next and had to stop myself. Will those nursery kids understand if I give them a lesson that Old Mac Donald actually had a bovine and we sing it that way? How do we know that he only had cows and not steer too? Do steer not moo? It's a sexist world if you ask me. And now I have to contribute to it! But when opportunity arises, I will be sure to explain the difference and do my part in correcting this wrong that those of us average intelligence have been told. Think about that next time you pass a field of ... bovines!