What's the opinion on Longhorns?

I want lean meat, Angus does not provide that, nor have I liked the Angus I've been around. I'm not a fan of herefords as they seem to get pinkeye fairly easy and we've got lots of cattle around us in summer pastures, I just don't like pink eye skinned animals of any variety.

Looked at 3 herds of Longhorns on Friday. So many choices! Beautiful cattle. One herd, the biggest and most expensive I didn't like as much, the guy went for horn size and not conformation, some bad toplines and cattle weren't outgoing. The other two herds I really liked, one especially. All the cows mulled right around us, the calves checking us out. Beautiful conformation, shiney coats and healthy weights. Now to decide what to get and what the pocket book can allow.

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ADGA Nigerian Dwarf and MDGA Mini Mancha goats for show, home use and pets www.dbarjacres.webs.com Located in North central Wisconsin

I hate to burst everyone's bubble about Longhorns not being cold-tolerant, but there are in fact a fair few producers here in Alberta that raise Longhorns. From what I've been reading, Texas Longhorns are highly adaptable, "...[thriving] under the hot Texas Sun and in the frigid Canadian winters without the aid of shelter, and with only minimum care."

Breed Advantages from the Alberta Texas Longhorn Association
Shipping Longhorns to Germany

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We have longhorn cows and are very happy with them. We bought the cows because they were cheap (350.00 each), ran them with a balancer bull and get almost all black or red calves with no horns. They sell very competitively at auction and the first years calves more than paid for their moms. The speckled or horned (which do NOT do well at auction) we keep and feed out. The beef is really no different than any other we have raised (dont know if this would be the case with full LH beef). The LH cows are very mild mannered and are easy keepers. They calve easily and are great mothers. We have kept the best heifers each year and bred them back to balancer bulls and as a result have alot of solid red and black (hornless) cows. We also have many of the original LH cows. Our plan was to sell them off as we replaced them with the beefier hornless stock but they have stuck around..I have no experience with the northern winters but LH are known as extremely tough animals. For us they were great because as a young couple starting out we could have never dropped 800-1000 dollars per head on cows but years later through being very selective on our bulls and heifers kept for breeding we have a pretty nice herd.

Biggest problem with longhorns is they are smarter then other cattle. Like DWH Farm said cross them with a beef breed and you will get a lot of solid colored calves.

We have highlanders, herefords, black baldies AND texas longhorns. Our longhorns were born in wisconsin to a farm that is actually north of here. We bought them grown. They calve easy, and they wintered just fine, and one is bones and skin (her build, not her condition), like a holstein almost. She still wintered fine.

And sorry oregon woodsmock. Herefords most certainly DO eat quite a bit more than they others. I have witnessed it with my own eyes. Year in and year out, the herefords and black baldies are the gluttonous pigs of the herd. Now, granted they produce the meatiest calves, but they do eat the most, hands down.

If you want longhorns, buy them, then cross them with some other meat bull. You will be happy with the results.

If I could find grown longhorns for 200$ a piece, I would be snatching them up faster than you could blink.

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www.infowars.com
www.angorafiber.com
Licensed ARBA Registrar

Well, we're 99% sure we are getting some longhorns from the one breeder. Just deciding what we can afford. These are really nice quality, registered ones, so calves are $400 and bred cows/heifers are $1000 (or more for longer horned ones). We are buying a steer too and he's had his horns burned, they experimented with a few this spring, so it'll be nice to see what happens with that, I'm toying with the idea of doing that.

There are some neat breeds out there that are medium sized like the Cracker, Randalls and Piney but they are just so hard to find, especially in Wisconsin, shipping a cow would be costly right now!

I just can't see a longhorn eating more than a larger breed, even in winter. I've talked to 8 different people in WI now and they all say they winter good, no difference between them and other breeds.

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ADGA Nigerian Dwarf and MDGA Mini Mancha goats for show, home use and pets www.dbarjacres.webs.com Located in North central Wisconsin

Why would you buy an animal known and bred for its horns and then burn them off? Somethin aint right about that.

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www.infowars.com
www.angorafiber.com
Licensed ARBA Registrar

you do that if you want to sell them as nice fat steers on the open market. You're going to get $1.10+ per pound off pasture right now with horns burned vs. about $.60 or less with horns at the sale barn. That'd be for people that won't butcher everything for themselves.

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ADGA Nigerian Dwarf and MDGA Mini Mancha goats for show, home use and pets www.dbarjacres.webs.com Located in North central Wisconsin

I've raised longhorns for years and essentially, they do fine in cold weather but you can find under certain circumstances that the horns can freeze in extreme cold. I prefer to leave horns on my steers because it gives me one more thing to market but that's just a personal opinion and nothing more. It may not be the same everywhere but I've heard of people dehorning because the longhorns are docked at sale because some people feel abattoires claim they are more difficult to process when they're handling volume.

define popularity? they have a label, at least in my area of a novelty type item..or you are a breeder of registered stock. they bring hardly anything in the salesbarns.

Why not just breed to a polled bull? That is what we do with our LH's and we get very few horned calves. Depending on the bull you will get beefier calves also. The few that have horns (or are not solid colored - they will dock those at the auction also) we sell to individuals for freezer beef. Just a thought.

I had a good friend that bought a herd of longhorns once. They were beautiful cows. Then he dehorned them! I'm thinking"why get longhorns then ruin what they are known for! I understand he didn't want to risk being gored but still if it was that big a worry then why not choose another breed!I can't wait to get back to our retirement farm so I can get my first ones.

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"Whose woods these are I think I know
His house is in the village tho...."