We have over the years found some interesting differences in the language of farming in different parts of the country and world. Some are colloquial, some are related to methods, some are just language that has developed in longstanding farm families. Here's my first question:

If you raise bovines, what do you call them? Are they cattle or cows? Do you call them ladies (my grandfather called his cows the ladies) or, like us, the girls. When they make you angry, do you resort to 'blue' language, or are you more creative in a suitable for the family hour way?

Ours are all "cows" - including the steers. They come to the call of: "C'mon cows!" I reserve the terms girls for the sows and ladies for my chickens. The cows are usually addressed by name or stupe nagle depending on the circumstances. The other animals can also be stupe nagles on occasion.

lol, ah, the stupe nagles, don't we all have some of those?

Around here, we have educated cows, they come to come bos, which is Latin for cow.

Hence the popular cow name "Bossy"? (Or does it refer to her attitude?)

I always called my cows (and they were cows, not cattle) with "Ho Boss"

And it is amazing watching a 1 ton cow (old genetics Simmentals when we first started out in the early 90's) come running down the steep hill in the back pasture - which we called the "back 40" even though it was just a 12 acre pasture - when I would step outside my door and yell "Ho Boss".

And they were cows in Wisconsin, cattle in Nebraska.

And my sheep were "sheeps" ('cause it was fun).

I no longer farm now

On the other hand, my dogs are ladies, and my cats are guys ~Jan

Down here we call them "the cows" or "the cattle". Those with a name we call by their name, otherwise we use their descriptions. We have a cow we call "red cow" and her calf is called "the red bullcalf". The pigs we call pigs unless they are feral in which case they are hogs.

I have a friend with a pet pig named Kevin.........Kevin Bacon. It took me a while to finally figure it out

Dave, is that the latest little Whitinger? If so you grow them up fast!

I love the pig name! We had a sow names Porcia and a German Shepherd named Alan. Now we need to name a Great Dane Hamlet - or a small pig might do.

Talkin' about a 'mixed group' it's cattle, if it's just the 'ladies' then cows...................... My Grampa did NOT use 'blue language', BUT, you knew it was -SERIOUS when you heard "You ol' SCISSOR -BILL!!" ( animate, inanimate something was in 'trouble' )

Gotta slip in a 'side note'.... My daughter raised 4H MKT hogs ....... One yr it was especially bad in our area for cougar attacks right around the time we were gettin' the little wiener pigs ........ Our pen was about 350+ feet from our house and every mornin' J would got down to feed before gettin' on the bus........... When it came time for fair, 4Hers write letters to potential bidders for their hog........... J wrote about the livestock killings/attacks around us, and how she dreaded goin' down to feed thinkin' any day her pigs would be no more.... It also 'inspired' her name for her 'chosen one' ...... Cougar McHappy Meal ........................ She sent out about 2 dozen letters and ended up with more than 10 bidders that year

Way late to this thread, but when we 'ran cows' many years ago, the neighbors would all trade use of the same bull and all new calves born in a given year were named beginning with the same alphabet letter. We came in on an I year, and our first calf was Irene. The next year was a J year and our calf that year was born premature and never stood up before dying - hence, Jello. Don't remember all the rest, but when we got to the M year, the name of choice was Moseley, and thereafter my husband simply called them all in with a "Come on, Moseley." As I recall, the bull-sharing had gone by the wayside by then and we quit naming cows, they were just known collectively as Moseley. Although I do remember one trouble-maker who was quickly dubbed The Black B**tard - that steer would jump any fence we put up. Fond memories of cow days, long behind us now.

I always thought that cows were the kind the are raised for dairy and milking. Milk Cows. And cattle are the ones raised for meat production. Cattle for meat, cows for milk.

That is likely textbook true, but local lingo tends to change regionally. No one in my area calls their cows cattle and almost all of them are raised for beef.

Our beef herd are all "cows". (I like the Moseley story!)

When we bred horses we named them alphabetically too. The first foal born in the F year was very oversized and died in the process - "Fatal Flaw".

More generally: do you call ponds dug to water stock "tanks" ? Some people don't seem to use that term, or maybe thy don't need to create artificial ponds.

I have a stock tank pond. It really was made for watering cattle. But for me it is my garden pond. I call it a pond.

We have lots of natural water in the PNW, so I've never heard of that term. I can certainly see the need for 'tanks' in drier regions, though. I think any dug watering hole up here would be referred to as a 'farm pond.'

The pronunciation of creek can be a bit fluid -- when referred to with its formal name, I use creek (we live on Church Creek), when referred generically, I call it crick (you kids go down to the crick and find some frogs).

When referring to our entire herd (including cows, bulls and steers) we use the word cattle. But if we're just talking about the female ones, we'll say cows. Maybe that's why people refer to dairy breeds as "cows", because generally you only keep females for dairy while a beef operation nearly always contains a wide variety males, females and neutrals.

We had a real mean rooster. We called him Big "B" (bastard) but since my granddaughter was around...

He would attack anyone who went into the run EXCEPT my granddaughter. I think he knew that would be the death of him. I think he's in the freezer now. since all the roosters met the same fate we call the chickens, girls. Nothing for the goats.

We used the same, creek and crick.

Not a great photo but you can see the keats, ten of them, just discovered today.

Oh brother. Such tiny little things don't look safe out in the big world.