Wait....huh...what? Oh, horny! As in.....why don't your cows have horns? Well, they do. All our dairy cows are born with little teensy weensy nubbins. They grow bigger as the calf grows bigger. If we didn't stop the horniness, well....they'd look a bit like this big girl here. She was not dehorned properly. Her right horn is almost normal, her left horn is deformed. BTW....she's a purchased cow, so it's not like The Dairy Farmer doesn't know what he's doing.
So, that is kinda what they would look like if we didn't dehorn them. We dehorn them for a couple reasons: safety for other cows and ourselves and to make sure they don't get stuck in places they shouldn't get stuck. We need to make sure they can put their heads safely in and out of the head gates (which is where they eat and where they attend their gynecological visits)
Now, some cattle are "polled," which means they are genetically bred without horns. I am pretty sure this is for beef breeds. They are mainly put out to pasture where they eat, drink, fool around and give birth, right out there in the field. I'm figuring that those farmers don't want to have to go round up a whole bunch of spunky angus and wrastle them, so they go with the polled variety. On a side note, I usually don't know too much about farm "stuff" so I just make it up as I go. Take all my drivel with a grain of salt (and make sure that salt is around the rim of a nice margarita)
Here on our dairy farm, we are more concerned with the genetics of health, body type and milk production, so we go old school and don't worry about horns. When the calves are a couple months old, The Dairy Farmer has to dehorn them. I have yet to watch this event occur, so I don't know what all it entails. All I know is, by the end of the day, the DF comes in the house stinking to high heaven of burnt flesh and you better hand him the TV remote and a beer.
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