Cattle

Cattle

Cattle
Reading Level

	edHelper's suggested reading level:	grades 4 to 7
	Flesch-Kincaid grade level:	7.94

Vocabulary

	challenging words:		domestic, gazelle, impala, intimidate, mild-tempered, peers, singular, commonly, social, hence, regurgitate, environment, species, bulls, offspring, mainly
	content words:		Industrial Revolution

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Other Languages
     French: Les Bovins
     Spanish: Ganado
     Italian: I BOVINI
     German: Rinder

Cattle

¹     Cattle have been domesticated for thousands of years. Before the Industrial Revolution of the 18th century, using cattle to drag carts or to plow fields was the popular means for farmers all over the world. Nowadays, farmers prefer using machines. Hence, it is becoming a rare scene to see farmers using cattle as farm helpers. Although cattle's role in farming has diminished drastically ever since the invention of machines, their presence on farmlands has remained strong. In today's environment, cattle are mainly kept for their meat, hides (leather), and milk.

²     Cattle belong to the family Bovidae. Like other family members (such as the impala, gazelle, bison, yak, musk-ox, and goat), cattle have three distinctive features. The first is their even-toed, cloven (divided), and hoofed feet. The second is their pointy, hollow, and un-branched horns, usually present in both sexes. And, the third is their 4-chambered stomachs. Animals with several compartments in their stomachs are called ruminants. When ruminants eat grasses or other vegetation, they partially masticate their food and store it in their stomachs. Later on, they regurgitate or throw up the food as a cud and chew it thoroughly.

³     Cattle are social animals. They live in large groups, called herds. A herd may consist of just a single or several cattle families. A dominant male or a bull guards his wives (cows) and young (calves) protectively. If he feels threatened by the presence of a hungry predator (such as tigers) or a challenging bull, he will not hesitate to use his best weapon -- his horns -- to fight. Unlike deer, cattle and their Bovidae relatives never shed their horns. On the contrary, their horns continue to grow throughout their lives. Asian water buffaloes, for example, have the widest horn span of any member in the Bovidae family. Weighing over 2,000 pounds, an Asian water buffalo can easily intimidate its peers or its enemies with its horns that expand to more than 6 1/2 feet!

Paragraphs 4 to 5:
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