Glossary
Ranch Hand Terms & Vocabulary
15 essential ranch hand terms with plain-English definitions: the vocabulary you’ll hear in training and on day one.
Key ranch hand vocabulary
These 15 terms come up constantly in ranch hand training, on the job and in interviews. Knowing them helps you follow instructions, document accurately and sound prepared.
- BQA
- Beef Quality Assurance.
- Calving
- Cows giving birth.
- Chute
- A device that holds animals for treatment.
- Dry cow
- A dairy cow not being milked.
- Ear tag
- An identification tag.
- Feedlot
- Where cattle are fed for market.
- Fence line
- A pasture boundary.
- Flight zone
- An animal’s personal space.
- Heifer
- A young female cow.
- Herd
- A group of animals.
- Pasture rotation
- Moving animals between pastures.
- Point of balance
- Where pressure moves animals forward or back.
- Steer
- A castrated male cow.
- Vaccination
- Preventing disease.
- Water tank
- Livestock watering equipment.
Practice these terms
Test yourself with the free Ranch Hand practice test: it includes vocabulary questions built from this list. For a complete course, see Ranch Hand training.
Browse terms from every career in our career glossary.