Horn Trainers - Blast from the past ?

[John C]

I had an interesting chat with a friend on the telephone the other night. He sells interesting countryside artifacts at about half a dozen antique fairs each year. He was telling me about some horn trainers that he'd aquired. There were two metal tips that fitted over the ends of each horn with wire in between them and some type of tightening device fitted on the wire.
I don't think I've ever seen them before other than in farm museums. I could imagine them being of possible use to Longhorn cattle keepers, but what about Dexters ?

[Duncan MacIntyre]

I don't know aboust their use in Dexters but I can just remember them being used in Ayrshires. Some of the older breeders considered a cow's horns to be "like a woman's hair, her crowning glory". Sometimes they were not just linked to each other but to a sysem of wires and pulleys above the head as they stood tied in the stall.

Duncan