# Scurs and horns: how long till you know what you're gonna get?



## frazzlehead (Aug 23, 2005)

The Icelandic ewe gave us a pretty little ram lamb, and he's got rough patches on his head where horns belong. The father is a Southdown (polled, obviously) and the ewe lamb that is this one's twin has no bumps of any kind where horns would go, just a smooth head.

Do these little keratinous bumps mean this little guy will grown horns? Or will he just have a couple of knobby spots?

How long till we know? 

Yeah, I'm impatient. And curious.


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## Bearfootfarm (Jul 13, 2006)

frazzlehead said:


> The Icelandic ewe gave us a pretty little ram lamb, and he's got rough patches on his head where horns belong. The father is a Southdown (polled, obviously) and the ewe lamb that is this one's twin has no bumps of any kind where horns would go, just a smooth head.
> 
> Do these little keratinous bumps mean this little guy will grown horns? Or will he just have a couple of knobby spots?
> 
> ...


Youll probably have a good indication by the time they are weaned. While Dorpers are usually polled, some of them will have small horns. A couple of my 3 month old ram lambs have horns about an inch long already. If they arent growing by then it will most likely not have a large set


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## kesoaps (Dec 18, 2004)

If they're just rough spots, they're likely scurs. Horn buds are big; no questioning that you're getting horns. You can see them. In a week or two, they're really growing. Here's a pic of Bailey last year, at 10 days. They were already poking up about half an inch.










Here he is at two months.


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## flannelberry (Jul 14, 2005)

I just saw this - in Icelandics at least, polled is dominant so the likelihood is scurs or nothin'.


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## ShortSheep (Aug 8, 2004)

If the sire is full polled (PP), and the ewe has horns (p'p or p'p') or is hornless (pp), the lamb will be a half poll (Pp). 
The size of the scurs is determined, in my opinion, by a series of different loci. I came to this conclusion while studying the phenotype of scur growth when introducing polled genetics to a commonly horned/ hornless breed for the last five years. 
Take another look at him around weaning. If the scurs are small or continue to break off, he'll probably remain small scurred. If the scurs have grown into flattened "knife blade" shapes, they will probably be large scurs. 
Polled is dominant, but incompletely dominant in rams. The poll gene fails to completely mask the horn gene, hence scurs in some of these sheep. I do think that using a full poll ram tends to create ram lambs with smaller scurs, maybe due to selective breeding. Smooth polled rams being retained, larger scurred rams being culled. 

My polled page:

http://www.illinoissheep.com/polled_page_intro.html


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## kirsten (Aug 29, 2005)

I got something odd this year. I keep dorsets and dorset/finn crosses and last lambing used a finn/texel ram and actually got a lamb this year with large scurs, larger than my dorset/finn ram- his only grow an inch and are flat and thick but they knock off but this one lamb has even longer scurs, one is 2 inches and he can't be more than a half or quarter dorset which I think is the only horned possibility in my flock. I ma not used to seeing horns on lambs- I was shocked. They are cute on your sheep though!!


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