Naming Cattle

[american honey]

Being a newbie to the cattle industry I come across a new question everyday. Well my question today is...why do folks name their cattle all sorts of names, like womanizer ect. Is it better for selling purposes? Or its just that way? Just a thought! Have a great day!

 

[flacowman]

with clubby bulls I think it's more for name recognition and the fact that most of them are so crossbred and unpredictable when they are young and you name them that you can't call one anything that would indicate a trait or quality that they would pass on to offspring.  With purtebred cattle we try to name them something similar to the sire or dam, depending on if you want to promote a cow family or sire.

 

[Lakeshore Show Cattle]

All of our calves have names that include the first letter of the dam's name and the letter abbreviation for dam and sire. Example VA Viper is from Vista and Adolph so V.A. and V starts his name. This way we know right away who they are from. However, I have 8 calves from Precious and I am running out of P names  There is a breeder in our breed that used to work for Chrysler and all their calves have Chrysler car  names

 

[american honey]

Oh okay!! Well I have been notcing that a lot of conversations on here include the cattle's name, and I just was suprised! Thank you very much!!

 

[OLD WORLD SHORTIE]

I love it when people buy donor quality females are very reputable ranches with excellent naming conventions and name recognition and end up naming the calf "GUM DROP" "Daisy"
just funny to me i guess.
Of course this really does not pertain to non-full boods, as they can and should be allowed to do whatever they want. But dont name your 20k Augusta Pride 3127's daughter J-low see that too.

 

[Bradenh]

promo bulls are named to try to catch an eye. and purebreds are named for identification as said before. names like womanizer, hollywood, rockstar are names that catch folks eyes (armani- my charolais influenced bulls name, catches some eyes solely because of the name being so popular)

 

[Cattledog]

I've talked to a couple sale managers at length on naming conventions and was told that the worst thing you can do is seperate a female from an established cow family by changing the traditional cow family name.  With that said on paper they are one thing and in the show barn they get cool names!  If they don't make it to the show barn their name is their tattoo number which is on the eartag. 

 

[Jacob B]

Had to jump in on this one.  I think that changing a cow family name is one of the worst things you can do.  I like to look back as far as a pedigree will allow me to see into a females pedigree to show me how old or how long that cow family has been around.  An established cow family that has name recognition helps the former, current, and future owners elstablish a recognition and history.  Don't we look back at the history of these cows to see what they have done in the past to better help us decide what to do with them in the future.  I hate looking at these powerful pedigreed cattle that have some goofy name not associated with the cow family, makes it harder for me to buy one personaly.  Bulls I can see some changes as you are promoting name value of that individual, but I still like to add some sort of name from his mother, after all that's a large part of why I breed to a certain kind of bull is to add his mothers cow family to a pedigree in hopes of improving on what I already have.  That bull would be nothing much to me without knowing he has a succesful mother.

 

[linnettejane]

i appreciate the "names" ,  its easier for me to associate the blood lines with the animals,  when there's a vision in the name, i know where its going, or an augusta, or a lilly, or a jazz, whatever...

the "names" that are just numbers are the ones that i have a hard time with....(sorry sue...i really like that bull...but i just cant remember those numbers...326?  out of 704?  makes great cows when bred to 049's....i can follow captain obvious and nitro and your "hog" line...but get confused when you start talking just numbers, lol....course, it doesnt take much to confuse me...)