Pariprashnena — Q&A Archive

From Wikipedia:

"Strictly speaking, the singular noun for the domestic bovine is ox: a bull is a male ox and a cow is a female ox. That this was once the standard name for domestic bovines is shown in place names such as Oxford. But "ox" today is rarely used in this general sense, instead denoting the castrated male used as a beast of burden. For some time, "cow" has been in general use as a singular for the collective "cattle" in spite of the objections of cattlepersons. It is equivalent to "horse" or "dog" and is easy to use when a singular is needed and the gender is not known, as in "There is a cow in the road." (Females of other animals, such as whales or elephants, are also called cows). To denote a specific number of these animals without specifying their gender, a measure word must be used, such as "ten head of cattle." The archaic plural of cow is "kine" or "kyne", which comes from the same English stem as "cow".[7] Some Australian, Canadian, New Zealand and Scottish farmers use the term "cattle beast" or simply "beast". In some areas of the American South (particularly the Appalachian region) the local inhabitants call an individual animal a "beef critter". This was common until the 1960s[citation needed] and has faded from usage in all but a few areas and even then it is used mostly among the aged inhabitants."

Read more here - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cattle

Thanks. I sponsor a "male ox" at careforcows.org and they have bulls,cows and oxen.