What's the opinion on Longhorns?
 

I'm looking for a beef breed cow or two from a Johnes negative herd. Prefer no herefords or angus (both are expensive and eat alot).

I doubt I'd run my own bull for a few cows, nor would I borrow a bull as I only want Johnes neg animals (I have goats in an adjoining pasture and free range chickens plus a tractor that goes back and forth during winter plowing). So, I want a breed that will be easy to AI (and easily available semen) - I've found Highlands to not be and I like Dexters but again, semen would have to be special ordered.

I've found some longhorns from a healthy herd, a first freshener reg. cow bred back for $700 and two bred heifers for $650. The cow is tame, the heifers calm but not tame. The breeder said they are easy to AI, and they are of the size if I wanted to I could use a differend breed to AI if Longhorn semen was too hard to get.

WWYD? Thanks!

long horn is going to be a real lean meat, next to no marbleing, still good though if you know how to cook it right, i would get a long horn cow and breed to an angus bull, best of both worlds, once i get set up for cattle down here i want to get some of the Corintine heifers and put an angus bull over them, extreamly low input hybred vigger and good carcas yeald at time of slauter,

There are longhorns in Wisconsin (google them).

If you end up with longhorns, you'll need some way to work them. Also google "medina hinge."

Longhorns lack backfat, body mass and a heavy coat, so they will burn more feed to get thru winter.

Sounds like your main attraction to the breed is the cheap price of the cows up front. Well if you can buy breeding stock that cheap, look into the future - what you are going to get when it is your turn to sell?

I'm not a fan of "fish out of water" situations like Longhorns in a Wisconsin winter, hairy Highlands in a Florida summer, etc. Why pick the "least likely to thrive" breed for your climate? Why not a breed that is well suited to your local climate and can perform at its best?

I think MO cows got right to the point! :goodjob:

They're easy calvers and if bred to a charlais bull throw some gray calves that can be dehorned and sold at the sale barn for competitive prices. I'm not familiar with the bitter cold you have up north so I can't make any mention of that.

Since you asked for opinions, mine is the same as MO-cows. Longhorns are not well adapted to northern climates. I don't know about Wisconsin, but , around here longhorns are the cheapest selling in the sale ring for a reason. You would be much better to go with a breed that is adapted to cold and snow. I think you will find that the feed bill isn't much different and you will have more value when you sell. And, in my opinion, if you eat your own beef, almost anything beats longhorn.

Gotta admit, what I know of Longhorns brings me over to the side of MO_Cows. Though I have seen some longhorns crossed with Angus and Charlais that were lovely and much more suited to cold winters.

I'm not looking for the cheapest, but beef is HIGH in WI right now. I want something that is a Johnes neg. herd. I google and google and just can't find anything. A friendly disposition is number one too.

I have been asking the 3 people I talked to about winter hardiness and they say they are just fine.

Maybe I'll check into galloways (oreo cows)....off to google some more.....

Sounds like you've already decided against the longhorns, but if not I'm going to add my not a good choice for Wisconsin vote the the others. Galloways would be a good choice for climate but you'll run into the same issues with semen.

My vote would be for Dexters, and order a couple of years worth of semen to be stored local to you since shipping is the biggest expense. Johnes is not that common among the small farms that typically raise Dexters (many of whom have completely closed herds) and who also stay away from the sale barn dairy animals.

longhorn cows are bottom of the barrel as far as sale price goes . I have 10 head of longhorn and longhorn corinette cross cows that i bought at auctions and have about $200 a head in them . These cows are really low maintnence they are on rough pasture and i only give them ground feed about once a week in the winter and a couple round bales or some silage . About the only market i have for them is at a local butcher shop that buys them for hamburger . I am breeding them to a herford bull as he was available and now almost impossible to catch some of the calves come out looking nice and sell well as pasture calves . I dont have problems with longhorns but keep in mind that can be hard to sell

They sell for more in Texas due to their popularity. I've had pure Longhorn burgers and steaks. I can tell the difference. Their meat is more fine and low fat. Makes for delicious meat plus they can defend themselves against bad critters.

Well, odds are we may be making the longhorn plunge soon. I've talked to 4 breeders in WI and one in NE IA about them. They winter just as well as the other breeds. I hope to be getting a 3 y.o. cow that is bred, her steer from this year and a yearling heifer from the gal in IA. She has a small, beautiful, gentle and healthy herd. I stopped last night by the guy 15 miles away from me that sells longhorn beef and got a pack of rib steak, hamburger and 2 sausage products. We had to open and sample it all (yes, it was a strange supper, lol). I love the leanness and DH said he can put up with it. I really want to go with this super-lean breed as DH has a cholersteral problem at 37 y.o. and he refuses to change his diet. He loves meat fat. This won't have enough to make a difference.

I don't want to go with the huge beef breeds and did find a person with British White Parks a few hours away, but they get pretty big too. Trying to find a herd with something smaller like BueLingo, Galloway they are majorly $$$ (like $2000 a cow from a health tested herd). Can't find any Dexters.

Deal isn't finalized yet, so we'll see....

It sounds like you're pretty set on the longhorns. Don't know if you really want to look into Dexters, but I counted over 40 owners/breeders in Wisconsin. If you want to contact any, click on the blue members line:

http://www.dextercattle.org/members.htm

Oh, thanks! I did not find that when I looked. I will definately be making some phone calls tonite to check prices on them. Never hurts to look some more!

Well, I gave up on Dexters. I found one guy that had $1500-$2000 cows and $1200 calves. and the other 12 people I called off the list either didn't have them anymore, had none for sale or were downright rude that I called to ask if they had any for sale.

Every person I talked to with Longhorns was friendly and helpful.

Well, that's too bad. On behalf of the nice Dexter breeders, I apologize for the rude ones. No excuse for that!!! Don't blame you a bit!

Ever consider the Pineywoods cattle? They come from the basic rootstock as the Longhorns but evolved to have shorter horns due to living in the dense woods of Florida. The total number of registered Pineywoods cattle is supposedly 200 but I'm aware there are many more unregistered ones because nobody thinks they're worth anything.

I'm not quite sure why you think an angus or hereford would eat more than a longhorn. Longhorns are great big cattle and don't put on weight easily. Your feed conversion rate is a lot more important than how much they eat.

Maybe they want lean beef which the Longhorn breed does provide. Angus doesn't.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.