[becorson]

do you have someone who can lead the horse (with a leadrope on his halter) while you drive him? if he leads well, that might make the situation less stressful for him and get him over the “hump”

[becorson]

Once a horse (or other animal) has a fear-filled experience, the way to get him over it is to allow him to have the experience and NOT feel any fear. this can be hard to accomplish with a big animal like a Belgian, especially if the procedure is at all painful or uncomfortable. if the horse has any joint problems (and many middle aged or older horses do) picking up a foot and holding it up long enough to reset a shoe is likely to be uncomfortable if not actually painful. a patient trusting animal will be able to adopt a “this too shall pass” attitude and tolerate the discomfort but an anxious or fearful animal will not. might be worth considering a touch of “chemical restraint” to take the edge of his anxiety ?? (just my 2 cents’ worth)

[becorson]

re: “humanizing” animals, i think humans ARE animals. and i know animals CAN think, and emote. in some ways we are different, sure. but in many ways we are points on a spectrum or continuum. there was an interesting article in National Geographic i saw recently, about “animal intelligence”. if intelligence is the ability to learn from experience, i firmly believe that some dogs and horses (and crows) who would score higher in “intelligence” than some people i know.
but of course, horses and cattle ARE also different from people. and they are not the dominant life form on the planet right now, Humans are. so that colors our relationship with them.
Still, i think it is an oversimplification to think that animals are in some way “lower” or less evolved than humans. i think Henry Beston said it well in his book “the outermost house” if i remember right, he wrote something like this:
“They are not underlings, they are not children, they are Other Nations” that seems true to me.

re: some people not being animal people– as a vet, i see all kinds of relationships between people and non-human animals, and i’ve often asked myself what being “successful” with animals means. Is it the person who has owned the largest number of animals? the person with the animals that live the longest? the person who is happiest to see his/ her animals in the morning and who spends the most time with them? the person who never drives a car or tractor but instead uses animal power 100%?
i laugh along with everyone else at people who paint their dogs’ toenails or have matching pink or purple accessories for their horse. but i guess when it gets right down to it i think there are many ways of being a “successful” animal person.

[becorson]

In the Mid Atlantic region (New York , and south through Virginia, actually) there is the weekly paper Lancaster Farming: horses, cattle, and other livestock listed for sale, also livestock auctions and much much more. (as they say.) http://lancasterfarming.com/

[becorson]

any updates on how they are doing?

[becorson]

Congratulations on getting such a great little horse. hope to hear (and see) more.

[becorson]

Just to answer Geoff’s question: “here” is Pa.

[becorson]

In PA, common vaccinations for dairy catle are: IBR, BVD, PI3, BRSV, rabies, (all viral diseases) Mycoplasma, Haemophilus, Mannheimia, Pasturella, (bacterial or quasi-bacterial respiratory diseases) , Clostridium perfringens type C and D and E. coli (intestinal bacteria) and Leptospirosis (a spirochete bacteria that causes abortions and other infections) .
there are lots of different brands of vaccines with various combinations of the above.

on a completely unrelated note: did you know that the word “vaccine” comes from the Latin word for cow (vacca) ? because the first vaccine, against small pox, was derived from cow pox ….. the cow that Edmund Jenner used for his first experiments with cow pox was a Glouchester named Blossom.

[becorson]

might depend on how long you are working them and how hot it is, right? and whether you are going away from the barn (or the trailer) or towards it. lol

my milking shorthorns are easy for me to keep up with at a walk, i figure they average 2 mph. Less when plowing or dragging stones in the sun on on a hot day .
my mares i have to almost run-walk to keep up, 4 mph is more average for them.

but i’m sure it depends. my ox mentor Worth Mcclure in Lancaster co. pa used to talk fondly of a particular team of “cattle” he had as a lad in North Carolina in the 1920s. he said they were the only oxen he ever knew who would routinely pass horse teams on the way to the mill. said they were known throughout the area as the “fast cattle”.

[becorson]

don’t mean to monopolize the conversation, but wanted to add that milk replacer is generally cheaper than real milk, that is why dairy farmers usually feed their calves replacer. But if you or someone you know has a cow, it might be different. if you use millk replacer, get one that is 100% milk based. statistically there are more problems if you feed a plant (soy) based milk replacer. i’ll shut up for now!!

[becorson]

should have proofread more carefully. in the paragraph where i say “vaccination makes a difference in a minority of cases”, i am referring to calves that stay on the home farm.
Vaccination does make a difference in calves that are taken to sales barns within the first few weeks of life but it’s the mother cow that needs to be vaccinated not the baby calf. . sorry if i’m being confusing.

[becorson]

First of all, my advice is to get a book or two. There aren’t that many on oxen and they aren’t expensive. ( i like to read and look at pictures, so trust me to recommend a book as part of your adventure with oxen.)
thoughts on the other issues that have been raised here: (comments are for information only and not meant to replace the advice of your veterinarian!)

vaccination IS a complex subject. the more you know about it, the more often you will find yourself answering questions with “it depends….”
whether or not you vaccinate, if you raise enough calves, you will lose a few. I think vaccination makes a difference in a minority of cases, practically speaking.
In the big picture, colostrum is the biggest factor in a healthy calf. A calf that gets enough colostrum will have some immunity to the same diseases that his mother was immune to, and those are the same diseases he is most likely to be exposed to. His mother has immunity to most of the the bacteria in her own manure for example, and unless the calf gets colostrum, he will NOT have any immunity to them. he can get sick and die from any of them.
of course, if you are taking the calf away from his home farm and exposing him to a whole bunch of new bacteria, viruses and etc., his mother’s colustrum is n’t going to help him unless his mother was vaccinated against those diseases. for example, a newborn calf from a cow vaccinated against rabies will have some immunity against rabies for a few months. but if his mother was NOT vaccinated, the calf will not have immunity no matter how much colostrum he gets. that is one reason why calves from auctions so often get sick, even if they did get colostrum at home.

About Johnes: Howie is right that the bacterium that causes Johne’s is present on many dairy farms in North America. Cattle get exposed to it in the first minutes and hours after birth, through the manure of adult cattle. a speck of manure on a piece of straw or on the dam’s teat is enough to expose the calf. most of the exposed calves fight off the infection and never become “johne’s positive”. a smaller percentage get a temporary infection and and eventually fight it off. these animals will have a postive blood test becuase they have been exposed to the disease, but they do not HAVE Johnes.
An even smaller percentage of animals that are exposed to the Johnes’ bacterium develop an infection and can’t fight it off. The bacteria live in the intestines and the lymph nodes and do enough damage that it interferes with digstion so the animal gets thinner and thinner. At some point, the animal with Johne’s disease starts passing bacteria in the manure, and the bactceria can survive a long time on the ground and in bedding: so this is how new calves get infected.
Adult cattle that are exposed to the bacterium don’t seem to get it. it seems to happen in the first few hours, like Howie said. calves from a Johnes positive mother that are whisked away immediately after birth, before they suckle or chew on straw in the calving stall, don’t develop Johnes IF they get colostrum from a healthy cow.

so, if you are followinng me here: you can get a calf from a Johne’s postiive farm, even a Johnes’ positive mother, but it’s important to know how the calf was handled if you want to be sure your calf won’t end up getting Johnes.

In the past few years there have been some big improvements in Johne’s testing. The lab where i work can do a test called PCR on manure; it is quite accurate and takes less than a week. costs about 50.00 at our lab.

[becorson]

a few thoughts:
certainly being in tie stalls makes for less waste in hay and bedding, so that is a major plus for people who are trying to save money.
i think the mews and stables of the various royal families in Europe traditionally used tie stalls (standing stalls) for their horses in work, (as opposed to their breeding stock) so i don’t think it’s JUST space/ or money .
horses in standing stalls learn to tolerate being handled and tended from behind without being able to turn around, so that might help them as driving horses… ?

on the other hand, researchers say that horses can only experience REM sleep when they are lying down and they can’t lie down, flat on their sides, in a standing stall.

An ideal situation might be horses in standing stalls part of the day, and turned out part of the day, too.

[becorson]

Very good questions, especially (?) for any folks that work with horses or other animals in a public setting. In that setting you have to consider not only the animals’ well being, and your relationship with them, but also the impressions that the “audience” is getting.

Every animal and every setting is different –My paint mare is un-fazed by re-enactment cannons, but my ox was stressed by just being inside the Farm Show building in harrisburg, with the crowds, stollers, all the lights and the PA system booming.
obviously there can’t be a cookbook approach to know “when to hold em and when to fold em “…. i guess our responsibility is to know our animals, and care about them even at the same time that we care about a larger job we are trying to do with their help. just my two cents worth

[becorson]

a couple of thoughts come to mind:

a jointed bit (snaffle) pinches the tongue and lower jaw like a nut cracker. A “french link snallfe” -with two joints- reduces the nut-cracker actiona little but i have not seen driving bits with a french link… only riding bits.
a curb or leverage bit (a liverpool , bruxton etc) puts pressure on the poll (behind the ears) and also traps the tongue and lower jaw between the mouthpiece of the bit and the curb strap. the degree of leverage depends on the length of the lever arms where the cheek pieces and the reins attach.
a straight bar bit has the simplest action but any bit can cause pain, even a straight bar bit (put a pencil in your mouth and pull down, pressing on your tongue to see what i mean. )
Horses can resist pressure from the bit and from the various parts of the bridle. for example, some horses have problems with headshaking unless they have a shaped crown piece that give them more space behind their ears (my older mare is one of them).
many horses are quite sensitive to pressure on their tongues . a curved mouth peice that allows some tongue relief can help.
with any bit, the horse has to be able to get relief from pressure by doing the “right” thing. if the horse is stopped, for example, or turning correctly, etc but there is still unrelenting pressure on the bit, many horses will resent that. remember that the horse’s team mate may be irritating him/ her , too.
overall, i have come to believe that the bit doesn’t matter as much as the teamster’s hands. a millimeter of space and a fraction of a second difference in timing can make a difference.

(not that i have hands like that, mind you, but i have been privileged to see some that do)

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