Domestic friend: Cow – Erakina

Every person has seen cows in their life. Whether they live in a city or village, everyone knows what a cow is. A cow is an animal that is one of the man’s best friends and the farmer’s best friend. So let’s see some of the facts about the cow and their significance to humans.

Characteristics of Cows

Cows have been present at an early age of 8000-to 10000 years ago in the world. At first, the species were not domesticated, and they were not pets to humans. As time moved on, they became more friendly to humans, and people started to take care of and treat cows as family members. In most countries, cows are treated as Holy animals. In Hinduism, the animal is accompanied by gods and goddesses, and some of them worship cows because they are sacred. In ancient Egypt, a cow goddess called Hathor was worshipped by people. The goddess represents motherhood, femininity, and joy in people. 

Every cow is female, and males are called Bulls and steer. Every cow differs from one another; some of the cattle’s bodies are long and rectangular, and some breeds have a hump on their shoulders. Some cows have straight horns, and some have curved ones.

Cattle breeds weigh around 1000-1100 pounds, and Bulls are 2000-2500 pounds. An average height of a cow is about 1.5-2m. Most of the cattle breeds are orange, white, and brown, and sometimes cattle can be seen in black. Some have big round spots, and some of them don’t. They have a 300-degree vision which is to identify a predator’s presence. But they can’t be able to see anything which is in front of them and at their back. So to this, they have a defense mechanism that they kick if they sense danger or anything directly behind them. This is why people say that we shouldn’t stand behind a horse and a cow. 

These domestic animals are vegetarians, and they feed upon the grass and sometimes grains. They have only lower and not upper teeth. By these characteristics, they chew their food by pressing the food up on their palate and using their lower teeth. The cow has a four-chambered stomach the rumen, reticulum, omasum, and abomasum. The food first goes into the rumen and reticulum, where the food breaking process occurs, and cows chew the broken food for a while. Then the digestion takes place, which takes around 1-3 days. 

A cow always lives in a group, and they can’t be able to live alone because they’ll get depressed. When a cow separates from the group, it’s either sick or going to give birth.

Facts about Cows

There are several facts about the cow that we people don’t know. Let’s see some of the attributes that best describe a cow.

• There are more than 1000 varieties of cow breeds, and most of them are separated as domestic breeds and meet species.
• Cows have a good sense of smell by which they can detect the scent from six miles away.
• Like dogs, cows also like to play and get happy when they get their attention.
• Farmers who own cows harvest more grass before the winter season so that their cows don’t get hungry.
• The first cow in the USA came around 1611 in Jamestown.
• Farmer families in Indian villages mostly own Jersey breed cows because they give more liters of milk.
• The skin of some cows is used in the making of leather.
• Cow ghee is an essential part of the toddlers’ diet.
• After the mother’s milk, cow’s milk is considered the next best milk globally.
• Cows are said to be the best swimmers. Some of the rare cows can swim up to miles. 
• Male cows are used in Tamil heritage called “Jallikattu.” 
• A cow eats around 40 gallons of food a day.
• In India, when a person builds a new home, they call the cattle breed cow to come inside the house for good fortunes in the future.
• The cow dung is used as fertilizer and used in making biogas. In the village, people apply cow dung outside the wall of the houses, which acts as a cooling agent on the walls.
• In India, using cow dung mixture in water, they spread them in front of the porch, which acts as an antibiotic that kills the germs that enter the house.

These are some of the facts about cows and their significance to humans. So let’s pet and protect the species of the cow for future generations.