Talk:Cattle/Archive 1

Old Talk
Why in the world are there so many images in this article? This is overkill in the extreme. Unless there is a good argument for keeping them I will turn many of them into media links that are linked to the main image's description page. Just because there are many images of cows doesn't mean we have to use all of them. Also, what about people on dial-up modem? This page will take way too long to download with so many images. --mav


 * It does, indeed. And in my browser the top right image is overlapping the table. -- isis 23:40 Sep 21, 2002 (UTC)

Moving them sounds good. I'm against deleting them altogether, because as a digital encyclopedia we should have a lot of multimedia content and I'm conservative about deletion. But as an Internet encylopedia we should be open to dial-up users and users with small screens. --Ellmist Saturday, September 21st 2002


 * OK then. Which image should stay and which should be moved? --mav
 * BTW, I've had this same problem come up with a few articles--I have several images & feel I shouldn't display all of them, even if I want to. dragonfly has two and probably shouldn't; Spanish moss has 3 but shows only one.  The other two are linked from the image description page of the first.  Maybe we should suggest a policy on this one way or the other.  --KQ 23:50 Sep 21, 2002 (UTC)


 * I think what you have done is perhaps the optimal solution. To improve upon it I would simply add a very short statement under the image saying "Larger and alternate images" and have that be a link to the image description page where the images are linked. --mav


 * I vote for "cow with calf" or "calves grazing" (the one beside it). --KQ


 * I vote for "calves grazing" too. --mav

Could you move some of them to pages illustrating the different breeds, please? I'd like to be able to see pictures to go with the names. -- isis 23:53 Sep 21, 2002 (UTC)

I'd like to move them to Images of cattle rather than on the :Image page that they're on now, because I think this is more in line with image use policy. comments? Martin


 * Make a Sounds of cattle, too. Thodin 16:35, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)


 * The article namespace is not appropriate for such an image gallery. We should tweak the policy instead to allow this use of image description pages so long as the article from which the page is linked (in this case cattle) has explicit text indicating to the user that the page they are going to has alternate images of the subject. Cattle already complies with this. In this case common practice is not reflected in the policy and the policy needs to be updated. If no images whatsoever were allowed to be displayed on image description pages then the developers would write one line of code to prevent this. --mav


 * There seem to be a couple of views - some people seem to agree with the policy (eg BigFatBuddha) and some people don't. Both sides have good arguments, I think. I'll raise it there... tomorrow! :) Martin

Small correction the difference between a cow and a heifer is a cow is a female that has produced offspring, and heifer has not produced offspring.


 * Not necessarily. Many producers, veterinarians, and others in the industry will refer to a "first calf heifer"--that is, a female that has borne a calf but not yet weaned it.  For dairy cattle, they are often called heifers when they first join the milking herd, and called cows some time later, towards the end of their first lactation.  Like many ag terms, usage varies from one region to another.  Kat 21:51 7 Jul 2003 (UTC)


 * There should be a section on how cows are treated. The treatment of cows is something that the public should know. Seeing how this is on cattle, it should have a thing or two about the treatment of these poor, defenseless, creatures.- Allison —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 65.80.49.20 (talk) 20:52, 22 April 2007 (UTC).

alert vandalism in article

India Traditions
The traditions of India should be mentioned. They are how cows are concidered "sacred". That is because they believe that humans are reincarnated as cows in the afterlife.

Titles for breed articles?
Hey, anyone--I see that breed pages are titled in one of three ways: Breedname (cattle), Breedname cattle, or simply Breedname. One might think we ought to be consistent. Thoughts on which is the best? (I'm inclined to go for one of the first 2, and use the 3rd as a redirect...? E.g., "holstein" would link to or redirect to Holstein cattle."   Elf | Talk 01:01, 25 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Livestock - Collaboration of the Week
Anyone interested in improving the content of the agricultural information on Wikipedia, here is your opportunity. Livestock has been nominated as a Collaboration of the Week. H2O 23:51, 27 Aug 2004 (UTC)


 * I'll keep it in mind but dog stuff tends to keep me pretty busy except when I'm slumming. :-) Elf | Talk 00:13, 28 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Name
Here is small list of links where cattle is called Bos primigenius taurus. 1) 2) 3) 4) 5) 6) 7)

Regards.--Wiglaf 11:21, 26 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Neat vs Meat
Maybe this will prevent others from making the mistake I just made: Neat really is an archaic word for cattle, not Meat. Elf | Talk 20:46, 28 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Oh Well
I thought the Guatemalan Cow of Paradise being listed in the livestock was funny. If you clicked on it it forwarded to The Far Side.

Whats wrong with a little tribute to Gary Larson? I think it should stay.

Watusi
If anybody wants to create an article about Watusi cattle, following are some links. Watusi look awesome. Unfortunately there is already a "watusi" article in wikipedia but it is just a redirect. http://www.watusicattle.com/ http://www.crazyforcows.com/fow/fow16.shtml http://www.ansi.okstate.edu/breeds/cattle/ankolewatusi/

Obsolete terminology?
Where I live, the term "beeves" (multiple beef cattle) and its singular "beef" are still used by ranchers and people in the processing business. While I agree that they're uncommon, and falling out of favor, they're not gone yet, and I'm not sure it's appropriate to leave "beeves" out and mark "beef" as completely obsolete. I didn't change this in the main article, though, as I'd like to hear some other opinions. And, as a side note, the word "heifer" absolutely means "female that hasn't given birth to its first calf" around here. I see that Kat disagrees, but doesn't this at least rate a parenthetical? Gary D Robson 16:45, 2 May 2005 (UTC)

Sounds
I suggest we place sounds of cattle in the article; maybe that showing the sounds of the different cattle kinds (i.e. american cows vs. brahman). Thodin 02:55, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Top Front Teeth of cattle.
Someone please include the fact that they have none in more objective or scientific terms than I possess. =)Yeago 06:40, 14 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Cattle population
Wouldn't it be nice to see some statistics on cattle population (worldwide, and perhaps in selected countries as well)? Has anybody got some figures they can share? (Somewhere I'm sure the US government has a public domain source we can raid...) Quartier Latin   1968  21:06, 13 July 2005 (UTC)


 * For example, according to the USDA, there were 94,882,000 cattle including calves in 2004 in the US. Can it be I'm the only person who'd be interested in this? Please Wikipedia, don't let me down, you've always been an infallible geek magnet till now! Quartier Latin   1968  21:41, 14 July 2005 (UTC)


 * Um, it won't let you down if you add what you want yourself. You seem to have found some good info.  Liblamb 03:23, 15 July 2005 (UTC)


 * Tip of the iceberg! World population figures, that's what I'm after! Quartier Latin   1968  22:16, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

I added some info on this. It would also be good if we could find a breakdown to beef cattle, dairy cattle, and "traditional cattle" Steve Dufour 12:58, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Breeding
There was a very fascinating program on last night about how farmers breed cows and how there is an entire profession devoted to collecting bull sperm. The program showed a vet doctor using a false vagina to collect the spern from the bull penis. Without drawing vandals and censors, that might be something to somehow put in this article. -Husnock 07:38, 15 July 2005 (UTC)

Peer Review or FAC
This article is pretty good and probably should be put on the road to becoming a featured article. However, one critisism that will come up... no references. If someone can at least put in a few major references, we could move forward. ike9898 13:48, July 29, 2005 (UTC)

Beeves
In Texas when thinking of cattle as meat-on-the-hoof, it's one beef, two beeves (check out Merriam-Webster); this is a case of linguistic analogy, based on calf/calves, and an interestingly irregular regularization of the noun, and probably other things too. I note there are at least three articles on Bos taurus, and agree there should be. There should be a 'fun bit' division at the end noting these things. The English language's management of this species is very interesting. --FourthAve 08:22, 1 August 2005 (UTC)

Cross-breeds
The article currently states, "Hybrid individuals and even breeds exist, not only between European cattle and zebu but also with yaks, banteng, gaur, and American bison, a cross-genera hybrid." Is this an exhaustive list? Can cattle interbreed with, say, wisents? —Psychonaut 17:05, 4 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Apparently cattle–wisent crossbreeds are possible: see Żubroń. —Psychonaut 04:41, 16 October 2005 (UTC)

Confusing Sentence about Oxen
I changed a confusing sentence that used to begin with "In addition to intelligence..." and now begins with "American ox trainers...". Does the sentence maintain its original meaning (whatever that was)? -Anonymous, 4 November 2005

frequent vandalism
Does anybody have any idea why this article is a favorite vandal target? Is there anything we can do to discourage this? A comparison of the last edit and the one 50 edits ago reveal few changes to the article, just a bunch of vandalism and reverting. Grrr. Liblamb 18:01, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
 * 'Cause cows are funny, as far as I can tell. Between "cattle" and "poop", the junior high kids have a field day. --jpgordon∇∆∇∆ 18:15, 8 November 2005 (UTC)
 * I've added the "frequent vandalism" notice to the top of this article, although I thought I'd leave NOEDITSECTION out until it is discussed here. The frequent vandalism notice appears on top of other such oft-vandalized articles as Hurricane Katrina, United States of America and Adolf Hitler, and I think it is warranted here. The full text (as would be seen when editing the page) is:


 * ATTENTION! PLEASE READ BEFORE EDITING!


 * Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia! Please understand that this article is one of our most vandalized, and vandalisms are reverted immediately. Vandals of this page will most likely be banned immediately, no questions asked. You will not accomplish anything by vandalizing Wikipedia. If you wish to try test editing, you may do so in our sandbox located at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Sandbox . Thanks!


 * IN SHORT: DO NOT ABUSE YOUR PRIVILEGE TO EDIT THIS PAGE, OR YOU WILL BE REVERTED AND BANNED.


 * - Cuivienen 00:52, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
 * MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOMOO MOO MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! What vandalism? Flip Merav 21 10:17, 3 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Reverted some vandalism and bungled the summary. Live with it. Graniitti 13:09, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

shorthorn
I noticed that Shorthorn redirects to Milking Shorthorn which seems incorrect, based on my own limited knowledge of cattle. --Big_Iron 10:31, 15 December 2005 (UTC)


 * That is because we don't have an article specifically for non-milking shorthorns. If you wanted to expand Milking Shorthorn (which does somewhat mention that there are other shorthorns) to include the non-milking variety, I'm quite happy to move Milking Shorthorn to Shorthorn and make the milking one a redirect...or to assist however else editors decide they want things split up. --Syrthiss 12:55, 15 December 2005 (UTC)

I hope that everyone out there knows that cows dont actually say moo. I mean come on they cant talk, so therefor the cows arent saying anything. god you people think you know everything. ~haeli~

Terminology
The terminology section needs to be tidied up to make it read in a logical order. Ben Finn 18:33, 27 December 2005 (UTC)

Cattle> Breeds of Cattle
CTPhil here, new and somewhat clueless Wikipedian. Thank you Syrthiss for reversing a change I made to picture formatting which apparently had unintentional consequenses. The last change was not me.

I had wanted to group and resize the pictures to take up less space, and give a more balanced appearance. I guess that can't be done without messing something else up. I had thought that I would fill the odd space that was created with a picture of my breed, but if that will just contribute to an overly large page, I will confine my photos to my breed's page. A question, then, If the wide picture of the Herefords was moved to the bottom, would it be possible that the list of breeds would then start at the top of the section, with thumbnails on the opposite side of the page? Phil 20:29, 28 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Ok. It might have just been an anon user who saw my change and thought I was vandalizing or something. :)
 * Let me take a look and see what I can figure out for formatting. I had just been reverting it because I didn't understand from my first look what exactly went wrong. --Syrthiss 21:31, 28 December 2005 (UTC)


 * So let me see if my understanding is correct: you would like to have the list of breeds section have the breed links down the left side (as is currently), and thumbnails to the breeds down the right side? I'm certianly good with moving the big hereford pic to the bottom or thumbnailing it down (since people can click on it to look at the herefords in their green field... it is a nice pic).  Does that sound right? --Syrthiss 21:40, 28 December 2005 (UTC)

Sure, that sounds good. I'm not stuck on having it change, I was just trying to neaten things up a bit. It's good to see that someone is watching so closely. :) Edit: I just saw the new page with the Hereford pic thumbnailed, looks great!  I like that the breed list starts at the top of the section. Phil 23:44, 28 December 2005 (UTC)


 * Glad we could sort it out. :) --Syrthiss 14:37, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

There no longer seems to be a list of the breeds of cattle. A list of the acknowledged breeds of cattle each linked to their own site would be a great addition to this site. ---User:kevinSlack 15:25, 12 December 2006 (UTC)