Texas Longhorn

This is the general Texas Longhorn population. The conservation bloodline registered by the Cattlemen's Texas Longhorn Registry is listed separately in this catalogue, and the two are not interchangeable.

The history is shared. Spanish missionaries brought tough open-range cattle up from southwestern Spain into Texas in the 1700s and 1800s, animals whose ancestors had run loose since the Middle Ages and which were used as oxen and for hides, meat and milk. Political control passed from Mexico to the United States in the 1830s, cattle management stopped altogether during the Civil War, and the herds went feral. Escaped Northern European cattle, British Shorthorns among them, bred into the wild Spanish stock in places and nearly wiped it out.

What survived did so on its own. The Texas Longhorn is the oldest North American cattle breed and the only one that evolved with very little human involvement. After the war the great herds drove north and made both the breed and the cowboy famous.

The modern population is large, and much of it has been selected for horn length and show type. That is the difference between this entry and the conservation registry. Ask which one you are looking at.