Maggie's Farm

Ye olde blogge has been interested in cattle, lately.
We have recently featured the most popular American diary breeds - the Holstein, the Jersey, the Guernsey, etc - for our city-folk readers who cannot tell a Jersey cow from a Jersey girl, and who have never milked a cow. (A post-test will eventually follow.)

While there are many wild species of cattle - American Bison, European Bison, Gaur, Water Buffalo, Cape Buffalo, Yaks, etc, the domestic dairy and beef cattle breeds are all derived from the Auroch, a Eurasian species which has been extinct since the last one was killed in Poland in the 1600s.

The word "cattle" is the antique French word chattel - same word as "possession". The word "steak" derives from the Saxon word for "stick" - that is, beef on a stick over the fire. Those Saxons ate well sometimes, I suppose, even without Weber grills.

A brief history of domestic cattle here. They were a great choice for domestication: relatively placid (not the bulls) grazing beasts which could provide milk, meat, labor, and leather. Since at least 6500 BC they were domesticated in Turkey, following pigs, dogs, goats, and sheep, but before horses.

Images: Aurochs from my time machine above, and an auroch from Lascaux to left.