Can you post a few pictures so we can understand the situation?

Big rule of thumb on "pines". They need a leader. One leader. If you have two main trunks you can often prune one back enough to let the other take over.

That sort of thing often happens with "Christmas" trees that have been in the dry warm house for way too long. By the time it's planted out the top ornament might have killed the leader. The cure to that is to let the ring of little branches at the very base of that dead leader grow in competition with each other and just cut them off one at a time over the next season or so, ending up with one new leader. The tree is almost self correcting. Otherwise you might get a bush!

25 feet is a lot.

A few pics would be great Mike. So they aren't the tall sinny fellas you see a lot in stands of trees?

In the local parks we have some pines in more natural shapes. Few weeks ago I was at a park where there were some clusters of 10 of whatever kind of pine. Several had codominate trunks which sorta grafted to themselves further up. Almost all "needed" their lower dead branches pruned. But they were alive and going.

It looks like someome came by and cut the tops off yours? Jagged breaks like the wind did it or smooth like a saw?

collectors in the conifer forum pay a lot of money for specimens that are round on purpose ... and you will never get them to grow like regular ones ...

and w/o pix ... i am not sure you can get a real answer .. other than gross speculation ...

also .. being new to conifers... let me tell you.. the xmas tree shape that you are thinking about ... is a MANUFACTURED uniformity ... see link ... even a youtube there

in reality ... no two trees are the same ... and that is a great par to the beauty of having a bunch of them ...

if you had a dozen kids ... you would not expect them all to be the same.. would you ...

first you need to determine their health ... and whether any of them are hanging over the house. and deal with those ...

then you need to determine which were improperly planted too close to the house in a landscaping sense ... the planter not understanding how big they would get... and deal with those ...

and any out on the back acreage .... you just have a few adult beverages.. and enjoy them for what they are ... in all their NATURAL beauty ...

and then.. in a few years... if you dont like them.. put them out of YOUR misery ... but i do recommend you give them time ... but for the threats mentioned ...

so.. all and all ... you need to dump your preconceived notions .... of what they should look like... and we can help you with that.. with some pix ...

and dont get me wrong.... if they have to go.. they have to go ... have no fear or hesitation about getting rid of garden plants that irritate the beegeebees out of you ... but do it for the right reasons ...

ken

Here is a link that might be useful: you really dont want this.. do you????

Thanks a lot for all the responses. I will post some pictures this afternoon.I guess my preconceived notions of what a pine tree should look like were false. I just want healthy trees that have room to grow and it appears to me that some trees are fighting for light and space resulting in one side with no limbs and the round tree I speak of is either 2 trees very close to each other or a tree with 2 trunks. After a lot of research I've come to the conclusion that the only way to trim pine's is to just remove some of the dead or dying lower limbs. Correct?