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Other than the few bulls needed for breeding, the vast majority of male cattle are castrated as calves and are used as oxen or slaughtered for meat before the age of three years. Thus, in a pastured herd, any calves or herd bulls usually are clearly distinguishable from the cows due to distinctively different sizes and clear anatomical differences.
Cow–calf operations are widespread throughout beef-producing countries, [5] and the goal of a cow–calf operation is to produce young beef cattle, which are usually sold. True to the name, farm and ranch herds consist mostly of adult female cows, their calves, and young females, called heifers, which will produce calves once of breeding age.
A freemartin or free-martin (sometimes martin heifer) is an infertile cow with masculinized behavior and non-functioning ovaries. [1] Phenotypically, the animal appears female, but various aspects of female reproductive development are altered due to acquisition of anti-Müllerian hormone from the male twin . [ 2 ]
However, beef cattle can also be bred through artificial insemination, [1] depending on the cow and the size of the herd. Cattle are normally bred during the summer so that calving may occur the following spring. [1] However, cattle breeding can occur at other times of year. Depending on the operation, calving may occur all year round.
Cattle originally meant movable personal property, especially livestock of any kind, as opposed to real property (the land, which also included wild or small free-roaming animals such as chickens—they were sold as part of the land). [2] The word is a variant of chattel (a unit of personal property) and closely related to capital in the ...
Only a proportion of purebred heifers are needed to provide replacement cows, so often some of the cows in dairy herds are put to a beef bull to produce crossbred calves suitable for rearing as beef. Veal calves may be reared entirely on milk formula and killed at about 18 or 20 weeks as "white" veal, or fed on grain and hay and killed at 22 to ...
More skilled bull riders and more athletic bulls have enhanced the sport. For some bull owners and breeders, the breeding of bulls has become a full-time career. A good example of a bull that ABBI developed into a successful breeding sire is three-time world champion Bushwacker, owned by Julio Moreno. Moreno retired him after the 2014 season.
The best bulls identified in progeny testing are formally given the award Young Beef Cattle (in French Viande Jeunes Bovins, abbreviated to JB). Female progeny go to a test station in Moussour in Corrèze, where they are inseminated with the same bulls and calve at two years in confinement before being put out to pasture with their calves.