But... cows do drink cow milk, that's why it exists.
It’s insidious isn’t it?
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.
A funny riddle is a j-o-k-e that sounds like “joke”.
You sit in the tub for an s-o-a-k that sounds like “soak”.
So how do you spell the white of an egg?
// All of these prove humans are subject to "context priming".
(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.)
Most farmers manage cows, and I'm not just talking about dairy farmers. Even the USDA website mostly refers to them as cows: https://www.nass.usda.gov/Newsroom/2025/07-25-2025.php
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.
It may not be technically correct, but so what? Stop being unnecessarily pedantic.