Yes, both male and female longhorns have horns. As a matter of fact, female longhorns will sometimes have much nicer and wider horns (more tip-to-tip). Males will often have a much larger circumference at the horn base, but, due to testosterone, they often tear up the tips and grind down their horns just being bulls.

Some of the largest horns in the industry easily reach 110" Tip-to-Tip (yes, that's close to ten feet wide!). While there are two predominant methods of measuring horn length, we prefer the simple and most common method of Tip-to-Tip (shown below). The other predominant method is total horn length, where the tape measure is run along the entire length and curvature of the horns. It's also common to measure the circumference of the horns at the base.

Horns are already in the process of growing when the calves are born. You can spot the little "nubs" during their first few weeks. While all longhorns are different, a few general rules of thumb are:

- Early on, horns can grow as fast as two inches per month.

- The most rapid growth happens up to about 4 years of age; after this, the growth rate starts to slow to roughly 1 inch a year.

- 90-95% of their horn growth occurs by 4 years of age

- By the time longhorns are 2 years old, you can double their horn length to estimate their horn length at 4 years old. This is often useful in predicting whether or not that particular longhorn will have "show-worthy" horns.

Longhorns can live into their early twenties and keep producing until their late teens. However, once they stop producing, it's about time for them to move on.

Female Texas Longhorns come into maturity and are ready to breed between 16 and 24 months of age. From there, it's 283 days (~9 months) of gestation until birth. Cows typically calve one calf at a time (it's a rare and a potentially dangerous condition to have twins). In nature, a bull can re-service within a month or so and start the process over which would provide another calf within 10 months. We prefer to give our mamas some time off and shoot for 1 calf per year until their early teens. So, it's not uncommon for a single, strong cow to produce 12-16 calves in her lifetime.

All that said, due to modern medicine and science, the number of offspring produced by a single cow can be much higher if you take into account embryo transfers. This is much more time consuming and costly compared to the old-fashioned way, but it's definitely a good tool when trying to capture and promote specific genes.

Great! Texas Longhorns are some of the most well-conditioned cows for almost any weather the United States can throw at them. They were some of the first cows brought to America and were the battle tested breed of the North American cattle drives. They are non-picky eaters (some might call that a well balanced diet), disease resistant, all-climate tolerable, and easy calving. On top of all of that, they're great to look at and be around (if I do say so myself).