How do you say it - Cow or Cattle?

[OtterCreekRanch]

When I refer to our cattle I refer to them as "our cows" even when we have a bull and various number of bull or steer calves. That is just always what I have called them and I have been around cattle my whole life. *shrug*

 

[77Herford]

one female bovine is a cow, several bovines are cattle

Not asking dictionary version. Asking how you mention them. Unless I'm generalizing on the herd in general its usually cows as they are the most important to me and always heard the word Cow used instead of Cattle.

 

[Nifty]

Now this is interesting! I dove into the stats of the site and reviewed the keywords peeps were searching for. I searched for the top ones that contained "cow" and the ones that contained "cattle" and look what I found:

Visits Keyword
308 cow treats
178 keeping a family cow
122 cow anatomy
110 backyard cows
96 zebu cow foum
67 backyard cow
65 f1 cattle
63 treats for cows
58 cow collars
47 cattle anatomy
39 butchering sick cattle
35 cow lunger
32 anatomy of cow

While "cow" may not be the correct term to use, it is the term most peeps are using to find BYH.

 

[Nifty]

Data sure is a tricky thing! People may be finding us more using "cow" because either:

1) More people search for "cows" or
2) Because our site uses the word "cows" more, or
3) Both of the above.

I ran some test queries in the following tool to see what people are searching for: http://www.google.com/insights/search/

It shows trends for searches, but if the searches are low volume they may not show up there.

Some samples:
http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=cows,cattle&cmpt=q
http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=raising cows,raising cattle&cmpt=q
http://www.google.com/insights/search/#q=how to raise cows,how to raise cattle&cmpt=q

So, going by that data, we may be better off with cattle vs. cows. from a search position.

 

[aggieterpkatie]

Are you just wanting to go with what people use more, or are you wanting to be correct? Most people who come here are new to livestock, I'm guessing. I think it's good that the site would use proper terminology so people learn not all bovines are cows.

 

[Nifty]

We "want" both!

At first it looked like the two wants were mutually exclusive, but it looks like "cattle" isn't only correct, but may be more popular a term too!

 

[kstaven]

My take on it is this. From searches I have done with google many posts have come up based on the text rather than title or the specific section of the forum. So if the proper term was to be used in the forum sections and people will no doubt continue to use the word cow also it gives us the best of both worlds.

 

[kstaven]

Thanks for your input folks. We have changed the forum section titles.