Once cattle get really low in condition they are done for. Sheep can be shifted when their pasture fails, but you can't shift cattle. They die quicker on the roads than on the run. The only thing is to watch and pray for rain. As for describing the animals themselves, it would take volumes.
Sheep are all alike, but cattle are all different.
Anyone sneaking about frightens them, and then they will charge right over the top of somebody on the opposite side, and away into the darkness, becoming more and more frightened as they go, smashing against trees and stumps, breaking legs and ribs, and playing the dickens with themselves generally. In this respect they differ from sheep, whose movements can be predicted with absolute certainty. All the cussedness of the bovine race is centred in the cow. To an exaggerated feminine perversity the cow adds a fiendish ingenuity in making trouble. While the search goes on she grazes unconcernedly, as if she never had a calf in her life.