Texas Longhorn (CTLR)

The breed descends from Spanish cattle that came north with missionaries in the 1700s and 1800s, off open-range stock that had run in southwestern Spain since the Middle Ages. Cattle management stopped during the Civil War and the herds went feral, which is how the Longhorn became the only North American breed shaped mostly by survival rather than by breeders. The trail drives after the war made it famous.

Improved British, European and Indian breeds pushed it aside in the 1900s and it nearly went out. In 1927 Congress established a national herd at the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge in Oklahoma, which is a large part of why the breed exists at all.

Organized conservation began in the 1960s, and so did the problem this registry exists to solve: selective breeding for horn size and show points compromised the purity of much of the population. The CTLR was formed to keep the original type, and is based in Tarpley, Texas.

A rangy animal of 600 to 1,200 lb, small next to a commercial beef breed and built for covering ground. The horns are long, twisting and spreading, sometimes lyre-shaped; bulls carry moderate horns, and the extreme spreads belong to steers and to the show population. In the show lines, spreads of more than eight feet tip to tip have been recorded, which is exactly the selection the CTLR line avoids.

Every color occurs, and speckled hides are as common as solid ones.

Fertility and longevity are the breed's working credentials: cows routinely calve at 11-month intervals, and cows still producing in their late teens are not unusual.

The Conservancy lists the temperament as docile but active, and rates the experience level novice to intermediate. The horns still set the rules: every gate, chute and trailer has to be sized for them, and so does your own position when you work them.

What you get is an efficient range animal: long-lived, fertile, and able to work across a wide temperature range on forage other cattle refuse. The beef is lean, and the breed's economics rest on low inputs rather than heavy carcasses.

Marginal land is the point. These cattle thrive where improved breeds need supplementing, resist disease, and tolerate heat and cold alike. What they need from you is mostly room, horn-sized handling gear, and restraint in trying to feed them into something they are not.

The CTLR line is ranked Critical on The Livestock Conservancy's Conservation Priority List. The threat is not extinction of the name, which is everywhere, but of the original genetics under the name: the show and rodeo population is large, while the conservation population within it is small.

Check which registry an animal is recorded with before you bid, because the two populations are not interchangeable. The Cattlemen's Texas Longhorn Registry documents the conservation line; the larger Texas Longhorn Breeders Association of America, founded in 1964, serves the mainstream population, where horn has been the selection goal.

Ask what the animal was bred for. A CTLR pedigree is a claim about range genetics, and that is what you are paying for; a long-horned show animal is a different product at a different price.

Recent sale prices on HoofnHorn, where there are any, are further down this page.