No, you're thinking of the term "cattle". Calves are indeed cattle. But "cow" has a specific definition - it refers to fully-grown female cattle. And the male form is "bull".
Because managing cows is different than managing cattle. The number of bulls kept is small, and they often have to be segregated.
All calves drink milk, at least until they're taken from their milk cow parents. Not a lot of male calves live long enough to be called a bull.
'Cattle' is mostly used as an adjective to describe the humans who manage mostly cows, from farm to plate or clothing. We don't even call it cattle shit. It's cow shit.
My brain said "y" and then I caught myself. Well done!
(I suppose my context was primed both by your brain-teaser, and also the fact that we've been talking about these sorts of things. If you'd said this to me out of the blue, I probably would have spelled out all of "yolk" and thought it was correct.)
No one who knows anything about cattle does, but that leaves out a lot of people these days. Polls have found people who think chocolate milk comes from brown cows, and I've heard people say they've successfully gone "cow tipping," so there's a lot of cluelessness out there.
> Many people use cow to mean all bovines, even if technically not correct.
Come on now :0
I just complained non-natives would have a problem distinguishing between a cow and a calf, and you had to bring those bovines.
To make it easier, would just drop that in my native language, the correct term for bovine is more used to describe people with certain character, that animal kind.