I would agree with nebrjewel, steers are not reliable as a pet. If you want cattle around, a steer is USUALLY much safer than a bull. However if a steer takes a notion, gets upset or stubborn, it is like arguing with a car left in gear with lots of gas! It WILL endeavor to go or do whatever it pleases!! Too bad if a person gets in the way or irritates him!. There have been and will be, lots of nice steers around. The problem is that they are large animals, can be unreliable in an instant! They cannot be depended on to always be calm, work well in all situations. I will add that the same stuff above, also holds true for cows, the female of the species. There is not much nastier than an angry cow!! The bad ones I have seen are also fairly calculating, work at trying to do harm. Includes both beef and dairy cows. One beef heifer was just bad from the beginning. Went for beef pretty quick after she started chasing folks in the field, not playing at ALL! She got loaded by trying to attack the man standing INSIDE the stock trailer. We were prepared for this and he used the open escape door in front while we slammed the gates closed behind her. She TRIED to come out the escape door too but was unsuccessful. The heifer she was in with grew into a nice cow, came when called, loved the horses. Never a minutes trouble with her. Another thing with cows is instinct, they react to conditions around them. A farmer we know was checking his cow with the brand new calf out in the field. The OTHER cow came from behind and horned him in the back!! He was lucky she missed the important body parts, but was still a terrible wound and infection mess. Seems that when cows calve, it gets ALL the cows on alert for predators, VERY excitable. He thinks that is why cow went for him, protective instinct, usually a nice calm cow. These are meant to educate the readers here. Folks need to pay attention, discuss behaviour, learn to READ THE CATTLE when you have them around. Livestock does the unexpected fairly often. How often to you want to hear hear the famous redneck remark? "Gosh, they never did that before!"

You're right, jen. It wouldn't be feasible to give plasma to a calf, for a couple of reasons - First-off, they don't have the artificially-inflated 'value' that horse owners often attach to a foal; they're worth what they're worth, and that's not much, if you're talking about a 2-3 day-old dairy calf from the salebarn. Secondly, plasma collection from bovine blood is troublesome; with horses, you just collect a couple of pints into blood-collection bottles, and the cellular components 'sediment' out fairly rapidly, allowing you to 'siphon' off the plasma. Bovine blood cells don't sediment very rapidly, so you'd have to have a specially-designed centrifuge to spin the cells down in order to harvest the plasma; no commercial producer is going to spend those $$$, as they would negate any potential profit this calf might produce, if it even lived.

Nice capture...I had to laugh at myself cos I thought calves and a limousine?...I've never heard of that specific breed before...They are a lovely color!

What a wonderful pic! When we had cattle I had only seen three from one cow and one was not born alive.