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Herefords -- Horned versus Polled?
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<blockquote data-quote="SPH" data-source="post: 1503429" data-attributes="member: 20580"><p>This is the topic that depending on who you talk to you will get completely different opinions on and there is never going to be a right or wrong answer to. This topic has been beaten to death here and other message boards over the years. As others have mentioned it really depends on the breeder who is selling, what the buyer values, and regional markets. There are some places in the country where there is a big gap in demand or quality for either horned or polled Herefords. In our market the polleds seem to be more in demand and there are probably more guys breeding polled than horned although some guys breed both so they have something to offer to any potential customer. A lot of the commercial guys we sell to seem to have a degree of uncertainty about what kind of breeds are mixed into their crossbred females so a Hereford bull being homozygous polled is important to some of them if horns are something they want to avoid. </p><p></p><p>Some of our females have horned animals in their pedigrees and if they are paired up with a bull that is not homozygous polled we sometimes get a horned calf as a result. The last time we had a horned bull in our sale pen he probably was the best bull of the 4 we sold that year but we wound up selling him for the lowest price of the 4 bulls because we had several guys look at him but passed on him once they found out he was de-horned as they didn't want to take the chance of getting horned calves by him. Had the same thing happen 1 year with heifers too, as soon as a guy found out a heifer he liked was de-horned he backed off. We have used some homozygous polled AI bulls over the years that the majority of our females are sired by and both our walking herd sires are homozygous polled. This year we are using 2 heterozygous polled AI sires as we are confident enough in the females we are pairing them with that a recessive horned gene won't pop up. </p><p></p><p>A horned calf is not the end of the world for us as we will put paste on them after birth so we don't have to de-horn after weaning. There is research going on with gene editing and it would be interesting if there comes a day when you can eliminate the horn gene while keeping all other desirable growth traits intact. I still think regardless of science and technology that breeders who know what works for them and their customers will continue to breed good cattle and let the animals they offer up for sale be a good representation of their program.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="SPH, post: 1503429, member: 20580"] This is the topic that depending on who you talk to you will get completely different opinions on and there is never going to be a right or wrong answer to. This topic has been beaten to death here and other message boards over the years. As others have mentioned it really depends on the breeder who is selling, what the buyer values, and regional markets. There are some places in the country where there is a big gap in demand or quality for either horned or polled Herefords. In our market the polleds seem to be more in demand and there are probably more guys breeding polled than horned although some guys breed both so they have something to offer to any potential customer. A lot of the commercial guys we sell to seem to have a degree of uncertainty about what kind of breeds are mixed into their crossbred females so a Hereford bull being homozygous polled is important to some of them if horns are something they want to avoid. Some of our females have horned animals in their pedigrees and if they are paired up with a bull that is not homozygous polled we sometimes get a horned calf as a result. The last time we had a horned bull in our sale pen he probably was the best bull of the 4 we sold that year but we wound up selling him for the lowest price of the 4 bulls because we had several guys look at him but passed on him once they found out he was de-horned as they didn't want to take the chance of getting horned calves by him. Had the same thing happen 1 year with heifers too, as soon as a guy found out a heifer he liked was de-horned he backed off. We have used some homozygous polled AI bulls over the years that the majority of our females are sired by and both our walking herd sires are homozygous polled. This year we are using 2 heterozygous polled AI sires as we are confident enough in the females we are pairing them with that a recessive horned gene won't pop up. A horned calf is not the end of the world for us as we will put paste on them after birth so we don't have to de-horn after weaning. There is research going on with gene editing and it would be interesting if there comes a day when you can eliminate the horn gene while keeping all other desirable growth traits intact. I still think regardless of science and technology that breeders who know what works for them and their customers will continue to breed good cattle and let the animals they offer up for sale be a good representation of their program. [/QUOTE]
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