Description: All cows have long, tufted tails. The color of cows is variable.

Range/Habitat: These are domesticated animals, thus they are found world wide.

Adaptations: The coarse, shaggy coat of a highland bull protects it from harsh weather in Scotland.

Courtship/Gestation/Birth: These animals have a year round mating season. Usually 1 young is produced after a pregnancy of about 9 months.

Diet: Herbivore. Cows eat grasses, herbs, leaves, twigs, and bamboo shoots.

Remarks: A cow has a special stomach with four compartments that digest the huge amount of grass the animal eats. A cow swallows its food after chewing it only a little. In the first and second parts of its stomach, the food combines with liquid and forms into cuds. Later the cow brings up a cud and chews it more completely. Then it swallows the cud, and the food ends up in the 3rd and 4th parts of the stomach for further digestion.
On farms around the world, cows are raised for two important kinds of food: milk and meat. Besides providing milk and meat, cows give us hides for leather as well as substances used in medicine, soap, and glue.
In India, people of the Hindu religion consider cows sacred. They do not kill or eat the animals.

Card by Henson Robinson Zoo Education Department.

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