Methodology to calculate the age of a cattle
Cows can easily reach the age of 20 years or more, but the longevity of animals is often artificially reduced by humans for breeding purposes.
Practically, there is no mathematical formula (well at least, not a simple one) because the age of a cow does not follow a linear curve compared with the human age.
So it's rather from observations of the ages of cows that veterinarians have established a correlation table (age chart) to see an equivalence in human age:
| Real cow age | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Human age | 14 | 18 | 22 | 26 | 30 | 34 | 38 | 42 | 46 | 50 | 54 | 58 | 62 | 66 | 70 | 74 | 78 | 82 | 86 | 90 |
Life expectancy of the cow: a cow can live 15 to 20 years ... but too often it ends up on the plate before ...
How do we call?
- a baby cattle: a calve
- a teenage cattle: a yearling or stirk (male) or a heifer (female)
- a female cattle: a cow! (beware: talking about meat, we usually know it as BEEF !!)
- a male cattle: a Bull, or Ox (bullock in Australia, steer in USA) if it is castrated
And you, how old is your cow?
Longévité
The oldest cow in the world we've had was an Irish Dremon breed cow named "Big Bertha" and who died in 1993, three months before its 49 years, after raising no less than 39 calves (that's also a record !!).
