Looking for horns

Messages
5,629
Location
Catalunya
Hi there.
I'm working on a wild project where I want to incorporate some horns, is there anyway of getting some cos or bull horns? Longhorn breed ones would be great, but I could get away with normal ones. I'm also searching here but no luck so far. Slaughter houses here are forbidden to non professional people.

Any help will be appreciated.
 
Wow USA never ceases to amaze me that you can order something like this online. And then on top of it all the other gear that store carries. And i thought the prices were not bad for niche products.
 
The Texans among us might be able to help. Shipping could be a bear though. Those things are huge!

Not all the cattle horns in Texas are the kind that people put on the hoods of old Cadillacs. There are lots of normal size cattle here as well as the traditional longhorns.

Since horns are an animal product, there may be an issue with exporting to Spain.
 
Thanks for the compliment to America. We are an enterprising people. I haven't answered Tony because my experiences shipping overseas caution me that something like cattle horns might get caught up in a burecratic quarantine. I can only suggest he might do like I would. Go to ranches and ask the ranchers if they have any, or if he could come on a day when they are dehorning.
 
Make sure you order cleaned horns, they will stink up the place if you have to boil them to get the meat out. Lol, I use to make powderhorns and sell them when I did F&I reenactments.
 

The longhorns for sale on Amazon are made of resin, and (snicker snicker) are 27.5 inches wide. The average width of real "Texas Longhorn" horns is 7 feet, and the record is 9'1" (see below). The horns are such collector items that they certainly don't sell for a mere $55 (the Amazon price). As a naturalized Texan, I have to defend my state!

Longhorn.JPG
 
I have a question for you Texans, does the beef off of a loghorn steer have a distinct flavor?

Kind of thing i am referring to is similar to what i know happens to lamb raised in South Africa in the Karoo. In this case its by virtue of the food that they eating. I dont think that lamb is for everyone but boy i sure do yearn for some Karoo Lamb chops. Yummy.


Now the best ever steak i have ever ever had was a USDA prime rib in Boston but that could have been any beef species and i never thought to ask at the time i was too busy tucking in.

Charlie that long horn is amazing. That one is going on my bucket list, as a person with an affinity to western things like this I just got to see one of those long horns in real life on a steer. :thumb:
 
We have one Longhorn "ranch" here in NE Ohio. She has about fifty head, and they do make impressive lawn ornaments. :D She exhibits at the local fair each year, and never fails to draw a crowd.

She has a limited (due to herd size) supply of horns and hides for sale from time to time. Gets around $350 ~ $500 for a skull with horns. They're usually in the 5~6 foot size.
 
I wonder what evolutionary function led to those wide sideways pointing horns? Are they really functional? They don't seem to point the right way for fighting or digging. More like poking the eye out of the cows next to you at the water hole or making space on the elevator. It's not like they have monogamous relationships, so they can't be for display to attract a mate. Maybe they are to intimidate the other steers in competition for cows? I don't know. If Andy Rooney were still around, he would know.
 
I can't offer much in the way of source of the horns... but on the shipping, assuming things haven't changed all that much in the last 10 years... likely you will need to approach the dept of agriculture and obtain a Phytosanitary Certificate to ship out of the U.S.... into Spain will be another set of regulations that will need clarification by the reciprocal of the USA dept of Agriculture. I haven't ever shipped just the horns, but about 30 years back, I did ship a pair of horns that was still connected to the bull.... we had a breed bull fly out of San Francisco to Madrid... he showed up on a truck on one side of the truck, his cage on the other side... we set the cage on the dock and the handler backed him off the truck, pointed him to the cage and in he walked..... we had to have a veterinary health certificate for him plus import permits.

I've also shipped an aircraft container called an LD3 full of Hamburger meat, along with the buns for hamburgers... and another LD3 container of Coors beer... one of my clients to the Paris Air Show (back in the late 1970's) used the hamburgers and Coors almost like cash to get things done at the air show.... about the same time, we also were shipping Horse Meat to France... it's evidently a delicacy that the French like....
in all cases, I again had to have Photo-sanitary certificates for the food products, plus import permits.

Depending on what Tony needs, the trip out to a rancher/breeder/farmer/ etc locally might be the best solution....
 
I have a question for you Texans, does the beef off of a loghorn steer have a distinct flavor?
...
Now the best ever steak i have ever ever had was a USDA prime rib in Boston but that could have been any beef species and i never thought to ask at the time i was too busy tucking in. ...

The important grading is (I believe) choice, select, prime, where choice should have been made into hamburger, select is a decent steak, and prime is twice as expensive. For the last few years the grocery stores have been pushing Angus beef, but I cannot taste the difference except for the extra $1-2 per pound.

...Charlie that long horn is amazing. That one is going on my bucket list, as a person with an affinity to western things like this I just got to see one of those long horns in real life on a steer. :thumb:

I thought the typical longhorn horn was about 6 feet, (as Ken Cook said, to fit an old GM Cadillac as a hood ornament), but I looked it up to be sure I wasn't going to embarrass myself, and found that 7 feet was average. That picture is from the web - the 9 foot record holder is actually in Australia, but the common name of the breed is still "Texas Longhorn."

I guess the purpose of the long horns is that they got the memo that everything is bigger in Texas.

Two places I could show them to you locally, off the top of my head, is in the field surrounding an international high-tech manufacturing facility (the guard at the gate doesn't let tourists in or the longhorns out), and a pasture next to an off-airport parking facility (apparently future parking, "loaned" to the rancher to be a tourist attraction for the parking lot).
 
Last edited:
Around here, longhorns are used for basic transportation. They are street legal after all. They're all equipped with...wait for it...





...horns!

Cowboys%20In%20The%20Street%20800.jpg
 
Thank you very much guys for all the info and links provided. You are right when you mention that I might have some customs issues, when importing them to Spain, I will have to ask and find out. What I do have seen in Barcelona airport is a showcase full of decomised animal products entered illegally in the country. Things like stuffed alligators, armadillo guitars, ivory carvings and tortoise shells among others although they mention that they have been decomised because they are protected species, being the horns I'm looking for from cattle I guess that there shouldn't be a problem although I will check to be sure beforehand.

Thanks again to all of you.
 
...the horns I'm looking for from cattle I guess that there shouldn't be a problem although I will check to be sure beforehand...

Your Agricultural Department, or Health Services may have an objection to importation of them. Remember the "Mad Cow Disease" furor in North America a few years back?
 
Top