Things are big in Texas. Like football and cattle. Unfortunately, neither of those things are now as big as they are in Alabama.
Meet Pancho Via. The Alabama raised Texas longhorn just set the Guinness Book of World Records for longest horns.
From tip to tip, the rack of Poncho Via spans 323.74 cm (10 ft 7.4 in) – more than twice the width of a concert grand piano – as confirmed on 8 May 2019.
It means that this superlative steer not only possesses the largest horn spread on a living steer, but has blown all past contenders out of the water to claim the record for largest horn spread on a steer ever too.
Poncho lives on a ranch in the small town of Goodwater – south-east of Birmingham, Alabama – where he has been raised since he was a weanling by the Pope family.
His horn tip span supersedes that of the previous record holder – a fellow longhorn steer called Sato, from Texas – by just over an inch.
Poncho has become something of a local celebrity in Clay County, as Jeral explained: “All my neighbors round here, any time they have company, they come over to see the longhorn. He’s just a big, gentle character. Everyone brings [food] with them – he likes apples, carrots and marshmallows.”
