Types Of Cows
What Are The Different Types Of Cows?
What goes into a list of types of cows more or less depends on what you're looking for. One list might be as follows: for the generic cow we have the mature female, the male, and the baby, called a cow, bull, and calf, respectively. There's also the yearling, the heifer, which is a young female that hasn't given birth to a calf as yet, and the steer, a young male that has been castrated.
You can also put types of cows into two broad categories, dairy cattle and beef cattle. Within these categories are literally hundreds of different breeds, including breeds that provide us with both milk and beef. The major dairy cow breeds in the United States are the familiar black and white Holstein, which is the champion milk-producer, the Jersey and the Guernsey, which came from two islands in the English Channel, the Brown Swiss, and the Scottish Ayrshire.
The major beef breeds are the Hereford, the Red Angus, and the Black Angus. One could add the Texas Longhorn to this group. Although it is not as numerous, it has often been successfully cross-bred with other breeds. Besides providing beef and milk, cows are prized for their hides. In times past, cows were even used as draft animals and beasts of burden, and this may still be the case in some parts of the world, though no longer the case in the United States.
Cows will be found all over the world, probably everywhere there are humans living. No one knows for certain when cows were first domesticated, though estimates run from between 5,000 and 10,000 years ago. It's generally believed that dogs, goats, pigs and horses were domesticated before cows. To get an idea of where all these breeds are either from, or currently live, one can go down the long list of breeds and get some clues. If you really want to get deeply into the characteristics of any one breed, an excellent source is BovineBazaar.com.
Let's take a look at some breed names, in alphabetical order: The Anatolian Black, the Angus, and the Argentine Criollo would be from Turkey, Scotland and Argentina, respectively. The Beefalo is a cow cross-bred with guess what? The Brahman hails from India, the Brown Swiss from Switzerland. The Danish Red is of course the cow you will see in Denmark, but is popular throughout Europe. The Dexter, from Ireland, one of the smaller dairy breeds, is a favorite of "one cow" farms or families, and has gained great popularity in the United States. Some other breed names that tell you their origins, are The Estonian Red, the Finnish, the Icelandic, the Norwegian Red, and the Ukrainian Grey.
The Beefalo, by the way, is not a joke, but a cross between any breed of cow (Angus, and Hereford being typical) and the bison. Normally a cross such as this would produce sterile offspring. However this is not the case with the Beefalo. If two of them mate, their offspring will be another Beefalo.
The Texas Longhorn did not originate in Texas, as you may be led to believe. The breed is descended from Spanish cattle, first brought to the New World by Christopher Columbus. Two hundred years later the breed, by now firmly established in Mexico, was introduced into Texas, becoming the foundation of our cattle industry.
You can make a list of types of cows just about any way you want to slice and dice it. A look at the various breeds, where they originated, and at the main characteristics of each, does make for an interesting study.