97 Fun Facts About Cows

How many compartments does a cow's stomach have?

Four compartments make up a cow's one stomach, so the saying that cows have four stomachs is slightly off; grass ferments in the first and is brought back up for a second chew before moving on.

Which compartment of a cow's stomach is the largest, a fermentation vat where microbes break down grass?

Rumen: this vat holds 25 gallons or more, and it is the microbes living there, not the cow herself, that break down grass, releasing the fatty acids that supply most of her energy.

Honeycomb-patterned meat from a cow's second stomach chamber is sold as which food?

Tripe is the cleaned stomach of cattle or sheep, sold as food; the word also came to mean worthless rubbish, which is why bad writing gets dismissed as tripe.

Domestic cattle descend from which extinct wild animal?

Aurochs were the wild cattle from which domestic breeds descend; in the 1920s the German zoo directors Heinz and Lutz Heck tried to breed the lost animal back, producing today's Heck cattle.

Cattle's wild ancestor died out in 1627 when the last known cow died in a forest in which country?

Poland's kings reserved the hunting of the animals for themselves and protected the last herd in the royal forest of Jaktorów, yet the herd dwindled and the species was lost.

How long is a cow's pregnancy?

About nine months, close to the length of a human pregnancy; and since a cow gives milk only after calving, dairy cows must be bred again and again to keep producing.

Cattle horns and hooves are made mainly of which protein?

Keratin, the protein of hair and fingernails, sheathes a core of living bone in each horn; a deer's antlers are bare bone shed every year, but cattle horns keep growing for life.

Which animal scientist designed the curved corrals and chutes that calm cattle on their way through handling plants?

Temple Grandin built her curved, solid-walled chutes around how cattle see: with wide-angle vision they balk at people and movement ahead, so the bend and the walls hide the distractions.

Bulls are colour-blind to red, so why is a matador's muleta still red?

To hide bloodstains: the muleta comes out only for the bloody final act, and the bull charges the cloth's movement, going just as hard at the larger capote used earlier in the fight.

What is the mouthful of swallowed grass a cow brings back up to chew again called?

Cud is chewed a second time for a reason: grinding the grass into smaller pieces makes it far easier for the microbes in the cow's stomach to digest.

What is a young female bovine that has not yet had a calf called?

Heifer is her name until she calves; a mother of just one calf is still often called a first-calf heifer, and only after that is she simply a cow.

In the United States, what is a castrated male bovine called?

Steer is the usual US term: males raised for beef are castrated young unless wanted for breeding, while one kept to pull a plough or cart is called an ox.

What is the usually infertile female twin of a bull calf called?

A freemartin shares a blood supply with her twin brother in the womb, and his male hormones leave her reproductive organs underdeveloped, which is why she is usually sterile.

On a ranch, what is an unbranded bovine of either sex called?

Maverick is said to come from Texas landowner Samuel Maverick, who left his calves unbranded; ranchers called any unmarked stray a maverick, and the word later stretched to independent-minded people.

What term describes cattle that are naturally born without horns?

Polled cattle never need dehorning, and because the hornless gene is dominant, breeders cross naturally polled bulls into horned herds as a living 'genetic dehorner'.

Which shaggy Scottish breed lives in a "fold" rather than a herd?

Highland cattle are kept in folds; the breed is hardy enough to thrive on poor, rain-swept mountain grazing where other cattle would struggle, turning land of little other use into beef.

Which black-and-white breed dominates dairy farming around the world?

Holstein breeders culled strictly for generations to get a cow that turned grass into as much milk as possible, and that yield has made it the first choice of dairy farmers worldwide.

Which island banned cattle imports for over two centuries, until 2008, keeping its small brown dairy breed pure?

Jersey lifted the ban in 2008 so farmers could import bull semen and breed for higher milk yields; until then the island's cows could only be mated with bulls bred on the island itself.

Humped, droopy-eared cattle of the species Bos indicus, well suited to tropical heat, are known as what?

Zebu come from a second, separate domestication in the Indian subcontinent, not the Near Eastern one behind European breeds, and tolerate heat, drought and strong sun far better.

Which humped American beef breed was developed from cattle of Indian origin?

Brahman cattle were bred in the United States from stock that originated in India; breeders have since crossed them with European breeds to create hybrids such as the Braford, the cross with the Hereford.

Which black, hornless Scottish beef breed reached America in 1873, when George Grant took his bulls to Kansas?

Angus bulls arrived without cows, so they were first bred to Texas longhorns; the calves proved their worth, ranchers took notice, and many more Angus were soon imported.

Which town became the first great railhead for Texas cattle drives when Joseph McCoy opened stockyards in 1867?

Abilene, Kansas, was a dozen log huts until McCoy built stockyards beside the new railway and advertised across Texas; some 35,000 cattle were driven there in 1867, up the Chisholm Trail.

Texas Longhorns descend mainly from cattle first shipped to the Americas by which Europeans?

Spanish colonists landed the first cattle in the Americas in 1493; animals that later ran wild in Texas for generations toughened into the Longhorn, with some British blood added by Anglo settlers.

The Chianina, one of the world's largest cattle breeds, traditionally supplies the beef for which Italian dish?

Florentine steak, Tuscany's famous T-bone, is traditionally cut from Chianina; the breed worked for centuries as a draught ox and has been selected mainly for beef only since the 1930s.

The extreme "double muscling" of Belgian Blue cattle is caused by a mutation in which gene?

A deletion in the myostatin gene removes a brake on muscle growth; the resulting muscling narrows the cow's birth canal, so Belgian Blue calves are commonly delivered by Caesarean.

Which marbled Japanese beef must come from Tajima cattle born, raised and slaughtered in Hyogo Prefecture?

Kobe beef is only the pick of the crop: the association first certifies carcasses as Tajima beef, then awards the Kobe name to those that pass a further grading for marbling and quality.

Legend blames Mrs. O'Leary's cow kicking over a lantern for starting which 1871 disaster?

The Great Chicago Fire was pinned on Catherine O'Leary's cow in the press; a reporter later boasted that he and colleagues had made the story up, and the city council formally cleared her in 1997.

Which Hindu god, raised among cowherds, is hailed as Govinda, the protector of cows?

Krishna was smuggled out to a cowherd village as a newborn to escape his uncle, the tyrant king Kamsa, who had been warned the child would destroy him; he grew up herding cattle there.

In February 1930, a Guernsey named Elm Farm Ollie became the first cow to do what?

Elm Farm Ollie flew from Bismarck, Missouri, to St. Louis on 18 February 1930, the first cow to fly in an airplane; she was milked mid-air and the milk parachuted over the city.

Elsie the Cow became the advertising mascot of which dairy company in 1936?

Borden's cartoon cow became flesh at the 1939 New York World's Fair: so many visitors to its milking exhibit asked which cow was Elsie that the company picked one from its herd to play her.

Elsie the Cow's cartoon husband went on to become the mascot of which product?

Glue: Elmer the Bull, drawn in 1940 as Elsie's mate, was lent to her dairy company's chemical division, and Elmer's glue has carried his name and face ever since.

Which restaurant chain's advertising features cows holding misspelled "Eat Mor Chikin" signs?

Chick-fil-A's cows arrived in 1995, the idea of the Dallas agency The Richards Group, and pushed aside the chain's old chicken mascot, Doodles, who survives as the C in the logo.

Pauline Wayne, the last cow to graze on the White House lawn, supplied milk to which president from 1910?

William Howard Taft nearly lost her in 1911: on the way to a Milwaukee dairy show her rail car was coupled to a cattle train bound for the stockyards, and she was spotted just in time.

A cow named Blossom supplied the cowpox Edward Jenner used in 1796 to protect a boy against which disease?

Smallpox: Jenner took matter from a milkmaid who caught cowpox from Blossom; because vacca is Latin for cow, his method gave us the word vaccine, and a hide said to be hers hangs at St George's in London.

Which protein makes up about 80% of the protein in cow's milk?

Casein makes up about 80% of the protein in cow's milk, with whey proteins such as lactoglobulin the remaining 20%; it curdles with rennet or acid to form cheese curd.

"Mad cow disease" (BSE) is caused by what kind of infectious agent?

BSE is caused by a prion, a misfolded protein with no DNA or RNA; the first confirmed case was in the UK in 1986, and some 4 million British cattle were culled.

In Norse mythology, the primeval cow Auðumbla suckled which being?

Ymir, the first frost giant, drank the rivers of milk that ran from her udders; she herself licked salty ice, and over three days her licking freed Búri, grandfather of Odin.

Ancient Egypt's sacred Apis bull was kept at a temple in which city?

Memphis housed the bull in quarters beside the temple of Ptah; when it died it was mummified and carried to Saqqara for burial in the underground galleries of the Serapeum.

In "Hey Diddle Diddle", who laughed to see the cow jump over the moon?

The dog laughs 'to see such sport'; Tolkien later spun the rhyme into a full tavern song, which Frodo sings at the Prancing Pony in The Lord of the Rings.

In Munro Leaf's 1936 picture book, what would Ferdinand the bull rather do than fight?

Smell flowers under his cork tree is all Ferdinand wants to do; published as Spain's civil war began, the gentle tale was kept out of Franco's Spain and reportedly burned in Nazi Germany.

Babe the Blue Ox is the giant companion of which American folk hero?

Paul Bunyan began in loggers' tall tales; an advertising campaign for the Red River Lumber Company then made the giant a household name.

Beaver, Oklahoma, hosts a world championship each April in throwing what?

Cow chips, the dried dung pats of the plains, have been hurled for distance in Beaver since 1970, as part of a festival recalling its days as capital of Cimarron Territory.

In rural South Asia, dried cow dung cakes known as "upla" are traditionally used as what?

Cooking fuel: the dung is patted into cakes, dried and burned in the chulha, the traditional kitchen stove, in place of firewood.

Farmers feed cattle a magnet that stays in the stomach for life to prevent which condition?

Hardware disease strikes when a swallowed nail or scrap of wire pierces the stomach wall; the magnet sits in the stomach and holds stray metal where it can do no harm.

What do cattle have in place of upper front teeth?

A dental pad, a hard leathery cushion on the upper jaw, does the job: a cow wraps its tongue around a clump of grass, pinches it against the pad with the lower incisors and tears it free.

About how much methane does a single cow belch out in a year?

100 kg is about what one cow gives off in a year, and despite the jokes nearly all of it comes out the front: the methane forms as feed ferments in the stomach and leaves as belches.

In which country do Hérens cows lock horns each year for the title "queen of queens"?

Switzerland's canton of Valais stages the fights, which exploit a natural habit: Hérens cows shove head to head to settle herd rank, so the contest is mostly a pushing match and the winner's value soars.

Turned upside down, which letter of our alphabet still shows the horned ox head it is thought to have begun as?

A descends from the Phoenician letter aleph, named after the West Semitic word for ox. Flip it and the two legs become horns on a triangular head.

Which English doctor took cowpox pus from a milkmaid's hand to create the world's first vaccine?

Edward Jenner called cowpox Variolae vaccinae, pustules of the cow, and the word vaccine comes from that name. The milkmaid had caught it from a cow called Blossom.

Which ingredient of many energy drinks was first isolated from ox bile in 1827?

Taurine takes its name from taurus, the Latin for bull or ox, because two German scientists first isolated it from ox bile. An energy drink carries one to three grams of it a serving.

In Greek myth, Zeus turned himself into a bull to carry which Phoenician princess across the sea to Crete?

Europa stroked the bull's flanks and climbed onto his back, and Zeus swam off with her. The continent of Europe may take its name from her.

Which 1996 blockbuster's airborne computer-generated cow was rebuilt by effects artists from a zebra made for Jumanji?

Twister's effects house, Industrial Light & Magic, also animated the tornadoes, trucks, tractors and whole houses by computer. It was the second-highest-grossing film of 1996.

Before genetic engineering, insulin for people with diabetes was extracted from which organ of cattle and pigs?

Pancreas extract from animals was at first the only way to supply insulin to patients. The cattle version differs from the human hormone by just three amino acids.

A 2008 study of satellite images found that grazing cattle worldwide tend to line up their bodies in which direction?

North–south, like a compass needle: where the two differ, the 8,510 cattle studied tracked magnetic north better than true north. Herdsmen seem never to have noticed the habit.

Which American PC maker, whose founder came from a family cattle farm, shipped its computers in cow-spotted boxes?

Gateway took its spotted livery everywhere it traded. In the late 1990s it began dropping the cows to look more mature to corporate customers.

Which East African people traditionally measure a man's wealth in cattle and drink the animals' blood and milk?

Maasai herders in Kenya and Tanzania drink milk daily and blood only on occasion. A man's standing rests on his herd, his wives and his children.

What is the name of the antibody-rich first milk a cow produces for her newborn calf in the days after birth?

Colostrum matters far more to a calf than to a human baby, who is born with a mother's antibodies. Calves denied it almost always die of bacterial infection.

Which cattle disease was declared eradicated in 2011, making it only the second infection wiped out after smallpox?

Rinderpest is simply German for cattle plague, and its last confirmed case came in 2001. The virus also struck buffalo, giraffes, wildebeest and warthogs.

In the United Kingdom, which wild mammal has been culled in the hope of controlling tuberculosis in cattle?

Badger culls have been argued over for decades, and one large field trial judged they could make no meaningful difference. New Zealand targets an import instead, the brushtail possum.

In the Book of Exodus, who makes the golden calf from the Israelites' earrings while Moses is on Mount Sinai?

Aaron gave in when the Israelites feared Moses would never come back down. Asked to explain himself, he said he threw the gold into the flames and out came a calf.

In Genesis, Joseph tells Pharaoh that his dream of seven lean cows devouring seven fat ones foretells what?

A famine of seven years, after seven years of plenty, was his reading of the dream. Joseph told Pharaoh to store the surplus grain, and the advice made him second-in-command of Egypt.

Which Egyptian goddess of love and music was often shown as a cow, or as a woman crowned with cow horns?

Hathor usually carried a sun disc between her horns. Egyptians revered cows as symbols of motherhood and nourishment because they care for their young and give people milk.

In Hinduism, Nandi the bull serves as the mount and gatekeeper of which god?

Shiva is rarely far from his bull: almost every temple to the god has a stone Nandi seated facing the main shrine. The name means joy in Sanskrit.

Which holy book's second and longest chapter is known in English as The Cow?

The Quran's chapter, Al-Baqarah in Arabic, also holds the scripture's longest single verse, known as the Verse of Loan.

In Greek myth, which god stole his half-brother Apollo's cattle on the very day he was born?

Hermes also built the first lyre that day from a tortoise shell. Apollo ended up letting him keep the cattle in exchange for it.

Which French chemist gave his name to the heat treatment that makes cow's milk safe to drink?

Louis Pasteur worked the method out in the 1860s to stop wine and beer from souring. It was many years before anyone used it on milk.

Which city in Navarre stages the world's most famous running of the bulls each July during the San Fermín festival?

Pamplona's bulls get no rest afterwards: the six that run through the streets in the morning also appear in that afternoon's bullfight.

Which Canadian city, nicknamed Cowtown, hosts a ten-day rodeo and festival called the Stampede every July?

Calgary's rodeo draws more than a million visitors a year, and the city's football team is called the Stampeders.

Which US state, known as the nation's dairyland, has residents who are nicknamed Cheeseheads?

Wisconsin takes the title seriously: it is the only state that makes cheese and butter makers hold a licence to produce either.

In the Chinese legend behind the Qixi Festival, a cowherd is parted by the Milky Way from which heavenly lover?

The Weaver Girl is the star Vega and the cowherd is Altair. Once a year, on the night of the festival, a bridge of magpies reunites them for a single day.

Which country, until 2008 the world's only Hindu kingdom, declared the cow its national animal in 2015?

Nepal bans the slaughter of cows and bulls outright, and one day of its Tihar festival, Gaipuja, is set aside for prayers to cows.

CowParade, the public art show of painted fibreglass cows, traces its origins to a 1998 exhibit in which Swiss city?

Zurich had tried the idea once before, in 1986, with painted lions, the city's own symbol. The first cow exhibit was not called CowParade either, but Land in Sicht.

Which cave in France, found in 1940 by a teenager following his dog, is famed for its painted Hall of the Bulls?

Lascaux has been closed to the public since 1963 because its paintings were deteriorating, so visitors tour replicas of the hall instead.

The Bronze Age Bull-Leaping Fresco, showing an acrobat vaulting over a charging bull, decorated which Minoan palace?

Knossos is full of bull imagery, and this is the best restored of several such panels. Scholars still cannot agree whether the leaper dived from above or sprang up from below.

Which Midwestern state's fair has shown a cow sculpted from butter as a staple attraction since 1911?

Iowa's butter sculptors go well beyond cattle: Norma Lyon, who carved the cow for 45 years, also made butter versions of Elvis Presley and The Last Supper.

Which cattle trail out of Texas is named for a trader of Cherokee and Scottish descent?

Chisholm laid out the route with the scout Black Beaver to supply his trading posts, and he died before the cattle drives reached their peak.

Which invention, patented by Illinois farmer Joseph Glidden in 1874, helped close the open range to roaming cattle?

Barbed wire gave farmers a cheap way to fence out stray cattle, and ranchers lost the open range. Glidden made the barbs for his best design with a coffee mill.

The cowboy word buckaroo is generally thought to be a mangled form of which term for a Mexican cattle herder?

Vaquero is built from vaca, cow, plus an ending that marks a trade. Some cowboys of the American West still call themselves buckaroos.

In the cowboy culture of the American West, what name was given to the crime of stealing cattle?

Rustling was taken so seriously on the frontier that vigilantes sometimes hanged or shot the thieves. The spread of fenced grazing gradually cut it back.

The word cattle once meant property of any kind and shares a Latin root, meaning head, with which financial term?

Capital and cattle both go back to the Latin capitale, property, from caput, head. The legal word chattel is a third member of the family.

Which wooden beam is fitted across the necks of a pair of oxen so that they can pull a load together?

Yoke is also the word for the team itself: a pair of oxen is called a yoke of oxen. Some designs sit behind the horns rather than on the neck.

Which hard fat, rendered from beef or mutton suet, was widely used for cheap candles before better waxes arrived?

Tallow candles stayed the cheaper choice for some time. The poorest households made do with a tallow dip, a reed dunked in the melted fat.

Which enzyme mixture, traditionally taken from the stomach lining of young calves, curdles milk in cheesemaking?

Rennet from calves has become the rarity. Industrial cheesemakers mostly use a cheaper version made by fermentation with engineered microbes.

What name is given to the fine writing surface that medieval scribes made from calfskin rather than paper?

Vellum comes from the Old French vélin, calfskin. Craftspeople still keep the word for calf and call any other animal's skin parchment.

Which sugar in cow's milk can most of the world's adults not fully digest?

Lactose tolerance in adults is the newer trait. It evolved separately in several peoples, probably after they began keeping dairy animals about 10,000 years ago.

What is the term for moving herds each year between lowland winter pastures and high mountain summer grazing?

Transhumance left its mark on the map. Local words for the high summer pastures, such as Alp in German-speaking lands and hafod in Wales, turned into place names.

Which British rock band put nothing but a cow in a pasture on the cover of its 1970 album Atom Heart Mother?

Pink Floyd had never before left both its name and its members' photos off a sleeve, and the band kept the habit through the 1970s.

Which cartoonist filled The Far Side with cows, and baffled readers with his 1982 single panel Cow Tools?

Gary Larson got so much mail about Cow Tools that he issued a press release to say there was nothing to explain.

Which British artist cut a cow and her calf into sections and showed them in glass cases as Mother and Child Divided?

Damien Hirst first showed the piece at the Venice Biennale in 1993 and won the Turner Prize two years later. His other preserved animals include a shark, a sheep and a pig.

Which chocolate brand, created by Suchard in 1901, has a lilac-coloured cow called Lila as its symbol?

Milka's cow wears a bell and has fronted the brand's adverts since 1972. Her name, Lila, is simply German for lilac.

The Laughing Cow mascot began as a First World War army drawing whose name punned on which band of mythical women?

Valkyries became La Wachkyrie when the illustrator Benjamin Rabier drew a mascot for a French army supply unit. He later reworked it for the cheese.

In the picture book Click, Clack, Moo, what do Farmer Brown's cows demand in the letters they type?

Electric blankets, to keep them warm at night: when the farmer refuses, the cows go on strike, and a duck ends up brokering a swap for their typewriter.

On a cattle pedigree the father is listed as the sire, so what is the term for the mother?

Dam is the breeder's word for a mother across farm animals, and it has been in print since at least Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene of 1590.

What is the term for moving a calf from its mother's milk onto the feed it will eat as an adult?

Weaning comes within a couple of months on dairy farms, while beef calves usually nurse from their mothers for six months or more.

In Greek myth, which king's filthy cattle stables did Heracles clean in a single day by diverting two rivers?

Augeas had promised a tenth of his herd for the job and angrily refused to pay. The labour was then discounted anyway, because the rivers had done the work.

Which dangerous condition, triggered when cattle gorge on lush clover or alfalfa, traps gas in the rumen?

Bloat in its frothy form locks the gas inside a foam, so the animal cannot simply burp it away as it normally would.

Which hybrid animal comes from crossing domestic cattle with the American bison in managed breeding programmes?

Beefalo turn out to be mostly cattle. A genomic study found that the vast majority, even pedigree animals, carry no detectable bison ancestry at all.