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Young cattle are called calves. A young male is called a bull-calf; a young female before she has calved is called a heifer (pronounced "heffer"). Male cattle bred for meat are castrated unless needed for breeding. The castrated male is then called a bullock or steer, unless kept for draft purposes, in which case it is called an ox (plural oxen), not to be confused with the related wild musk ox. If castrated as an adult, it is called a stag. An intact male is called a bull. An adult female over two years of age (approximately) is called a cow. The adjective applying to cattle is bovine. There is no singular equivalent in modern English to cattle other than the various gender and age-specific terms (though "catron" is occasionally seen as a half-serious proposal). 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 placenames such as Oxford. But "ox" is no longer used in this general sense, being restricted to the sense given above. Today "cow" is probably the closest to being gender-neutral, although it is usually understood to mean female (females of other animals, such as whales or elephants, are also called cows.) To refer to a specific number of these animals without specifying their gender, we must say (for example) "ten head of cattle."
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