[Crabapple Farm]

Thank you Bivol for bringing in these different cultural traditions to the discussion.

@bivol 4236 wrote:

another curiosity… my cousin, who has more knowledge of ethnology, told me that hungarians use slavic words for agricultural tools. this means they were not agricultural peoples when they settled in today hungary, they learned agriculture from the slavic peoples they subjuged. and slavs lived in the entire region of middle and eastern europe. so you can say that that yoke is in fact a slavic yoke.

Not to get too far afield here, but my understanding of european linguistic history is that Finnish and Hungarian are the only two surviving languages descended from Ugaritic(?), the language of the pre-indo-european peoples of central and northern europe. I have no idea of what their agriculture consisted of before the Indo-European speaking peoples moved west into their region, but I do know that Oxen and Horses were domesticated by the IE speaking peoples before they left their homeland (through linguistic evidence). So the Hungarians might have picked up Slavic words for agricultural tools a very long time ago, if there were no such words in their own language.
Anyone know what the Finns use on their Reindeer?
-Tevis

[Crabapple Farm]

If an ox wearing a single neck yoke without britchen and without tension on the traces lowers their head, the yoke will slide forward to their horns. When it does that, the neck is shallow enough that it can flip over, under their neck. The yoke is top heavy, and so it wants to slide under the neck. If there are traces involved, this can be a real nuisance.
A real well trained ox who you teach to walk with their nose in the air is one solution. Holding onto the yoke all the time is another. Most people prefer using a britchen of some sort.
If you are never planning to use shafts or wheeled vehicles, and so don’t need the britchen to hold or push back a load, then you don’t need the britchen to be fancy harness straps. I have used baling twine successfully for short durations, though I wouldn’t recommend it. But clothes line ought to work – one line running behind under the tail, another running over their back to prevent the britchin from falling down out of position and tangling in their legs.
The goal is to keep the yoke held back in “working” position – in this position the neck is deeper than wide, and so the bows will prevent the yoke from rolling.
I’ve based my single yokes on the dimensions for the double yoke in Drew Conroy’s book, and used eyebolts through at the outer ends for hitching to. I like to use the heavy duty welded galvanized grade of eyebolt, but for real light loads with a training yoke standard duty might be fine (just check the load rating on them and respect it).

[Crabapple Farm]

Pioneer makes them, which looks like what Jean has. They just bolt on to the hub instead of the wheels – so they would fit any cart with the same hub/bolt pattern.
I have also seen runners that you just roll the wheels up onto and chain on, but I don’t remember the manufacturer.
-Tevis

[Crabapple Farm]

I’d been leaning towards harness with britchen, back pad, etc. anyway, thanks Carl and Howie for continuing me in that direction.
I hadn’t thought of short chains to the shafts, I’d been picturing running traces back to a singletree.
What Howie describes sounds like a similar geometry to a D-ring harness, with the two eyes on the ends of the shafts functioning as the D-rings. So next question: where should that point be best located on an ox?
I’m assuming that the traces should form a straight line with the shafts, and both back pad and belly band should be snug enough to keep them there. Should the back pad to belly band line be at the heart girth, as close to the front legs as possible without interfering with movement? Or some point further back than that? Where on an ox’s back can they most comfortably carry weight? My assumption is that it would be as close to the shoulder as possible.
-Tevis

[Crabapple Farm]

On the horned / dehorned cattle cohabiting question:
We have a mixed (motley) small herd of cattle – a pair of horned shorthorn steers, a horned jersey milk cow, her mother, who is dehorned (we bought her from a dairy), half a dozen polled beef cows (all crossed up, but with angus and galloway making them all “naturally” polled), and some yearling steers, a couple of which have horns.
The oxen sometimes get a bit obnoxious throwing their weight and horns around, they seem to like making the younger boys jump. But the younger boys know to jump, so no injuries have resulted. The oxen tend to leave the ladies alone, but maybe it’s just that the cows don’t get themselves into stupid positions as often as the yearlings do. The jersey with horns weighs less than any of the other adults, and is near the bottom of the pecking order despite her horns.
I agree that horns are no more dangerous than feet – the cattle seem to be more aware of what they are doing with their horns, so as long as they have respect for you and your personal space…
BUT – they are all either loose outside or tied in stalls inside. Horned cattle loose in a tight space with corners is a dangerous combination, in my opinion. So in some barn setups, I could see horns being problematic. But it seems like the proper thing would be to call the barn setup problematic, not the horns. Horned cattle do need more barn space than polled cattle, which is an economic argument that can carry weight.
-Tevis

[Crabapple Farm]

I would like to emphasize Howie’s phrase “if they are in condition” on the plowing question. Plowing is hard work, and if in general you don’t have enough work to keep them in good shape, then they will have a real hard time plowing up stiff clay once a year. If you can do some logging in the winter (firewood or whatnot) and spreading manure in the spring before plowing, so that you are working up to it, they will do much better.
However, I’ve seen some pretty small one-pony plows at auctions, so you can always match equipment to an animals abilities. Once you have the team trained and have worked with them, you’ll have a much better ability to assess what their abilities are.
We’ve got some heavy soil ourselves – I have found that moisture content makes a huge difference in how it feels and behaves with tillage. Between soup and bricks there’s a sweet spot.
We try to use a chisel plow and disk rather than the moldboard where possible, which doesn’t work for sod but works in an established garden.
-Tevis

[Crabapple Farm]

@Rod 3993 wrote:

At the risk of being demonized I suggest some indepth research about the real cause of global warming. There are a lot of very respected scientists that believe it could it be sitting up in the sky beaming down on us daily, no more no less.

I see the status quo invested in the naysayers argument, and little entrenched money invested in promoting the notion of global warming, so the latter argument sways me more. but…
I heard an interesting radio speach by the former CEO of Shell oil (emphasis on the former). His take on global warming and carbon emissions was simple and elegant: why waste time on bickering over whether our pollution is changing the climate? We are spitting crap into the air, which we all breathe, and that’s obnoxious and we ought to cut it out. If as a bonus we stave off planet-wide catastrophe, cool. But first and foremost, we need to take responsibility for our emissions. As a society, we’re behaving like spoiled adolescents.
Note: this is a paraphrase, NOT a direct quote.
Unfortunately, the politicians and political appointees are looking for quick, politically expedient fixes to get reelected. Ones that, say, hurt an economically and demographically insignificant sector only (that’s us, folks), and not an electorally important one.
And no, in my experience it is safe to assume that they have absolutely no idea where their food comes from nor are they concerned about it. They have complete faith in the efficiency of the “global marketplace” and the laws of supply and demand (where there is wealth and demand, supply will appear).

-Tevis

[Crabapple Farm]

As Bivol mentioned, expect milk production to drop in proportion to their exertion working. To some extent, you can up their feed proportionally, but their are some limits to an animals ability to process feed into energy for both working and producing milk. I know plenty of women who have nursed babies while farming (including my wife) – but it takes a lot of food and still takes a lot out of them.
Also, if you aren’t leaving the calves on the mothers, you may want to milk three times a day during early lactation, to reduce udder swelling and stretching, as a low hanging udder could interfere with a cow’s ability to work.
-Tevis

[Crabapple Farm]

My boys would find a hay bale distracting also. The easiest thing is probably to just avoid the situation. But easiest is not necessarily what you’re going for when working with animals (for “easy,” just use a tractor or atv or something just like everyone else).
First off, it’ll be much easier if they have full bellies than if they haven’t eaten recently. I wouldn’t try asking anything of my oxen before breakfast. And I’ve found that in the afternoon, the closer it gets to feeding time, the more they act up. But I don’t work them enough to have developed better habits.
If you want feeding hay to become a regular thing that the oxen help with, you could build a box for the sled, so the hay isn’t just sitting there in the open calling to them. or throw a tarp over it. They’ll still smell it, of course, but it might be less distracting.
-Tevis

[Crabapple Farm]

Howie, did you use anything as an evener when working unicorn or tandem hitches?

I have seen pictures of, but have never used, a vertical evener designed for hitching tandem teams of oxen together. Basically a triangular piece of 1/2″ plate steel with holes in the three corners for attatchments – wheel team’s yoke hitched to top hole, lead team hitched to bottom hole with a chain, and the load chain hitched to the hole in the rear. I think Tiller’s International designed and made the one I’ve seen pictures of.
For a unicorn hitch, it would be nice to make the evener offset, so that the single gets a proportional load. Think of the proportions of the rear part of a three horse evener, scale it down, and hang it vertically from the yoke of the wheel team.
I hope that is coherent and you can picture it.
You can of course just hitch chain to chain with no evener, but the pull will be much nicer with some sort of evener in there (I think, but again, I’ve never done it).
-Tevis

[Crabapple Farm]

It seems that everyone’s jumping on the mangel wagon – Johnny’s and Fedco are both offering seeds this year.
Fedco (bless them) mentions a good Mangold (Mangel) reference from Britain:

http://www.mangoldhurling.co.uk

Check it out, it’s worth looking at, even if you have no interest whatsoever in mangels, mangolds, or any other type of beet.
A new event for next year’s NEAPFD?
-Tevis

[Crabapple Farm]

@mstacy 3725 wrote:

Keeping them even is my biggest challenge. Perhaps my logic is flawed, but I’m thinking its easier to control the rabbit if I keep her close to me. Luke is the tortoise … but very calm and reliable so I keep him on the off side.

That’s reasonable logic. Sometimes the slow one would be better as the nigh ox, if they’re poky and unwilling and the other is willing and eager, so that you can keep on them to keep moving. But it sounds like with your two, slow and steady and willing needs less minding than fast and unsteady.
Generally, the less willing (to follow directions) ox gets put on the nigh side. One thing that can happen with teams as they age is that, because the nigh ox gets more attention, they become more willing, while the off ox, with less attention, becomes less willing. Something that I think can be easily prevented if you are attentive to the possibility, and make sure to reward the well behaved off ox for their good behavior.

[Crabapple Farm]

I think a big part of the recommendation for beginners on the holstein side is that they are so common, and hence relatively cheap. At least in this part of the world.
These days a good bit of ox “conventional wisdom” (especially among us relative newbies)can be traced to Drew Conroy, possibly including the notion that holsteins and Brown swiss are good beginner breeds. Around here, the only other common options are Jersey, shorthorn, and devon. The latter two are hard to find, and between Holstein, Swiss, and Jersey, I wouldn’t recommend someone starting with Jerseys (though I know some who have, successfully).

[Crabapple Farm]

A couple dairy farmers around here have been crossing their jerseys to normande, I think they may be getting close to fairly purebred with some of the most recent generation. We’ve bought a couple normande cross calves to raise up (we’ve got a house cow and raise an extra calf or two each year above what our own cows produce).
They are indeed a dual purpose breed. Milk production wise, their larger frame means higher feed requirements than jerseys, without as much of a production increase as with swiss or holsteins. But good protein numbers (the folks who seem happiest with them are making cheese). The guy we know with them who’s selling to the bulk truck has decided that a 50/50 jersey cross is good, but he doesn’t really want more normande than that (feed to milk ratio starts to drop)
As beef, they’ve got more meat than jersey or holstein, less than a beef breed.
Temperment wise, they seem like they would work well for oxen, but I didn’t try to train any up at all. In build they seem similar to milking shorthorn. Compared to jersey, holstein, swiss, shorthorn, and devon (other breeds I have a little experience with), I would say their personality is somewhere between holstein and shorthorn.
Jersey / Normande crosses come out brindled red, real nice looking, and the guy we’ve bought a couple from has a couple of people with standing orders for any pairs of bull calves close in age.
-Tevis

[Crabapple Farm]

I think this is mainly a novelty thing for show. While a three abreast team obviously has more power than two, the inconvenience of yoking, hitching, and driving three I think would outweight the advantage. Two teams would be easier if you need more power.

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