New to the board but not new to cows, especially horned herefords. Other credentials = 4th & 5th generation with horneds, Grandfather imported some at the time Anxiety 4th was imported (still have the reg. papers), run a lot of commercial range cows, have a purebred horned Hereford herd to raise our own bulls for 50+ years, went personally through the dwarfism thing and owned some clean cattle some dirty which we commercialized, and ran a Hereford bull test in the 70's.
In the western range environment you almost never see a polled Hereford bull.
We leave the horns on our commercial Hereford cows because they and a black baldy will be found grazing farther from the water hole. Also if you have to find cows with an airplane then with the horns you know that they are yours. For the same reason they stick out in a neighbors herd if they mistakenly gather them. If you run a lot of bulls together in the winter those without horns will never quit fighting and settle anything so they have a much higher injury rate. A neighbor from years ago pointed this out to me when he asked why we never had crippled bulls and his were always being crippled. In the 50+ years we have bred and raised our own bulls I cannot remember a stiffle or any other injury than a broken penis.
A neighbor here has the nicest looking straight Herefords in the county and they are polled. They are absolutely paddock cattle, fed 9 mos. per year when we cry that 1/2 of our cows have to be fed 2 mos. and the other 1/2 never. Last year they had a 50% preg rate and yet they baby those cows 365. They have to finish those cattle over 1500 miles away because the take such a beating locally pricewise.
For the above reasons you could not give me a polled Hereford if I had to use him.
I however am establishing at this time a small Angus purebred herd for producing our own bulls. So I am not color blind.
