I have so many people ask me if I'm afraid to go in the field with my cows because of the horns. I have people who are curious about them come to the farm to see them because they think they are neat to look at but are afraid of them. So I take a bucket of range cubes out to the field, call them and usually within 3 minutes we are surrounded by fifty or so cows plus calves and a bull. I always get the kids (if there are any) to feed the cows a couple of these cookies. Once they experience these big horned cows with 50" to 60"+ horn spans eating from their hands like ponies I pretty much have them won over.
Any kind of cow can be agressive to other cows, with horns or without. I'm not going to lie and say that I don't have some butting around from time to time but my cows don't fight nearly as much as my dad's Beefmaster herd which contains both polled and horned animals. As a matter of fact his horned cows with the sharp, short horns do alot more damage to each other than my big horned cows do.
To each his own, but to me it's damn shame to cut those big horns off. For any of you folks who may be considering trying some Longhorn cows in your commercial herd I challenge you to leave the horns on and see how much damage you have, if it gets bad you can always take off the horns but I think you may be surprised at how well it will go. Now I'm sure somebody will come back with a horror story but there's always exceptions to the rule. We've got two Beefmaster cows with horns (about 6" long) that I'm considering dehorning because they are some mean b*****s. I'm about tired of these two jammimg their heads into everybody else's sides when they are eating.
For any of you are dead set against Longhorns talk to some folks who use them with a Char bull or any other breed and let them tell you how pleased they are with them. One of my neighbors who runs a black bull on his beef herd consisting of Beefnmaster, Char, and everything else has a few Longhorn/Angus cross cows that weigh about 900 lbs each. He swears that they always wean the biggest calves and they bring the highest even though they sometimes still show some white spots. Those folks who know them will tell you what they can do for you and those who don't can't because they are so dead set against trying something different. Ok, I'm tired of standing on my soap box so I'll get off now.