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this post was submitted on 23 Sep 2023
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"Cattle" is a mass noun. You have a lot of cattle.
If you want to state a number of them, you have seventy-two head of cattle. "Head" is a counter; compare "sheets of paper", "bales of hay", or "hands of poker".
You wouldn't say you have fifty hay, or that you played five pokers. And "papers" (count noun) are written works, whereas "paper" (mass noun) or "sheets of paper" (mass noun with counter) is what the works are written on.
If you're in the cattle business, you absolutely do care about their age, sex, and reproductive status. So you might have one calf and six cows; or three steers; or two heifers, a yearling calf, and a bull.
If you really need to refer to one bovine without talking about its age, sex, or reproductive status ... you have one head of cattle, or you have a cattlebeast.
Yep, that's a thing.