Horned Bulls

[Bez__]

You almost have to leave the horns on in order not to confuse the polled guys. I've got a picture of the mother of my new yearling heifer bull (not hard to even guess that she is a dehorned cow) that I have been showing a bunch of locals. Any that have been around horned cattle, can tell what she is. But in discussion with hardcore polled guys, even some with sizeable operations, all of them tell me what a good-looking polled cow she is. I just shake my head in disbelief. If you can't look at a mature cow and tell whether she is polled, or dehorned, I really am going to question your competency as a cattleman, particularly those which spout off as being king-shyt of cattle (lots of those around here).

Just yesterday, I was going through a very large herd of polled herfs and looking at newborns. Even running 200+ cows, they can't tell whether a newborn has horns or not, even if the hair curls are sticking out like wings on a bat!

Another story, had a guy come over a couple weeks ago, and buy a bull. Didn't want a horned bull, but really liked this one polled bull. Had to eventually tell him that his pick was a dehorned bull. He couldn't believe me, even though the top of the bull's head was as flat as a board. And this was a fellow almost 3 times my age and was always around cattle.

Your description is humorous.

I always say a polled cow wears a dunce cap and a horned cow is a flat topper

Bez

 

[Andyva]

From a biological standpoint, the horns are the radiator. If you cut one off, you will notice a pile of blood going through there. Also, if you notice, your wild cattle that live in hot places have horns, bison have stubby little things in comparison to some of the water buffalo. Your breeds that have popped up semi-feral in hot places have horns, think watusi and longhorn. There is no doubt that it is a huge advantage for a cow out on pasture to have horns, if she lives in hot country.
As far as the social aspects of having horns, the best example I can come up with, is once I had a whole herd of Spanish meat goats. The one with the biggest horns was always the boss. If you dumped a dehorned one in there, the darned thing wouldn't do anything but fight. Darn things didn't know when to quit, it was like they just assumed that their horns were bigger than anyone else's. The cattle that I've had seemed to follow suit, the ones without horns fight more and longer. (That might just be because the polled one have had Angus in them.) We never had any of the ones with horns missing an eye or stabbed to death, about the worst I've seen was a broken horn.

All that being said, I don't really want horns on a bull, they can hurt you bad enough without impaling you. The turning down would be good, if you lived in a hot enough climate to leave the horns on.

 

[Taurus]

From a biological standpoint, the horns are the radiator. If you cut one off, you will notice a pile of blood going through there. Also, if you notice, your wild cattle that live in hot places have horns, bison have stubby little things in comparison to some of the water buffalo. Your breeds that have popped up semi-feral in hot places have horns, think watusi and longhorn. There is no doubt that it is a huge advantage for a cow out on pasture to have horns, if she lives in hot country.
As far as the social aspects of having horns, the best example I can come up with, is once I had a whole herd of Spanish meat goats. The one with the biggest horns was always the boss. If you dumped a dehorned one in there, the darned thing wouldn't do anything but fight. Darn things didn't know when to quit, it was like they just assumed that their horns were bigger than anyone else's. The cattle that I've had seemed to follow suit, the ones without horns fight more and longer. (That might just be because the polled one have had Angus in them.) We never had any of the ones with horns missing an eye or stabbed to death, about the worst I've seen was a broken horn.

All that being said, I don't really want horns on a bull, they can hurt you bad enough without impaling you. The turning down would be good, if you lived in a hot enough climate to leave the horns on.

I think you forget the yaks, the auroch, the English longhorns and the highlanders, they have long horns but they don't live in hot places.

As for the bulls, well I think it's safe to say that everyone in here won't turn their back on the bulls, no matter if the bull is horned or polled.

 

[TexasBred]

As for the bulls, well I think it's safe to say that everyone in here won't turn their back on the bulls, no matter if the bull is horned or polled.

All cattle at one time had horns. We've either removed them after birth or bred certain breeds to be polled in more recent years.

 

[lithuanian farmer]

Horns never were a trouble for us, so we just leave them. In some ways horns are better, for example, when we need to handle cattle, because every year we need to take blood tissues from all cattle elder than one year. When you put rope on horns for cow or bull it is much easier to handle them than with halter. Our stock bull is horned, but never caused any problems yet. Sometimes polled heifers and cows are more lively than the horned ones.