[Tim Harrigan]

@fabian 27070 wrote:

Tim, what do you think about the future behavior of the well trained team if the new teamster is not as experienced as he should be (and the former trainer probably was) ?
Wolfgang

I think it will depend on the team and the teamster. Some teams are pretty laid back and willing to go along with just about anything without complaint. Other teams will begin testing you as soon as you pick up the goad to find out exactly what they can get away with. Match a novice teamster with a ‘hot’ or poorly trained team and you will probably have problems. It could work, but the teamster better get up to speed quick. Put the same person with a laid back team and it could go fine, the only drawback is they might not learn much.

In some ways the same thing can happen when training a young team from calves. Some are laid back, others are not so willing to follow along easily. It seems like a lot of novice teamsters who do not have ready access to a mentor end up not that happy with their first team. It is a challenge to anticipate what the important issues are the first time around, and they may not realize when certain behaviors indicate problems are emerging until they become a project. And, they often do not understand how to correct problems that have cropped up. None of the important stuff a teamster needs to know is in a book.

So it is hard to anticipate how a given situation will unfold, but it is nice if the team and teamster are a good match. I just sensed in this situation that getting to work might be important and in that case an older, trained team is a good choice. I don’t buy the idea that you have to train a team from calves in order to have a solid relationship. They are herd animals. If you respect them and demonstrate leadership and trust, you will bond as a team.

[Tim Harrigan]

To answer a few of your questions, of course large animals will eat more than small animals. For general planning purposes you can think in terms of cattle eating about 2.5% of their body weight in dry matter per day. So if an animal is 1000 lbs, about 25 lbs of dry matter. Dry hay might be 15% moisture so you will have to feed about 29 lbs of hay to get 25 lbs of dry matter. When you throw in feeding losses that might be 10% or so depending on how you are feeding them you could be in the 30-35 lb/day range for each 1000 lb animal.

Jerseys can be a good working team and I am guessing steers will go about 1500 lb when full grown. What is unknown from your description is how well trained and conditioned they might be. If they are in working condition they could be a good team for skidding firewood and reasonable size saw logs.

“so i want to start a team of oxen this summer for small low-impact logging jobs that dont need a tractor or for costumers that would rather have draft animal power. mostly pulling firewood and maybe some saw logs here and there. there are some teams for sale in my area but i kind of want to train my own for a more and better hands on relationship and train them the way i want.”

When I read this I picture you managing and using your team the same way you might use your tractor, taking them out for certain jobs here and there and parking them when animal traction is not your preferred method. Starting and training a young team will take a considerable amount of time and commitment, and when the team is young it will not include getting much actual work done. When they are older, the more they are worked the better they will be. If you do not put time in early on, and work them only occasionally later on, you will not likely have the nice working team that you envision.

I encourage you to consider purchasing an older, trained team if you will have enough work using oxen to justify the time and expense, and the value of the enjoyment they will provide if you truly like working with them. They will be productive sooner, and will probably be more forgiving in their response than a younger team might be since this is your first team and there might be some gaps in your training process. That will give you a chance to learn about working and training oxen and will allow you to be better prepared to train a young team down the road if you decide to go that way.

[Tim Harrigan]

Andy, this is a rough spring to be experimenting with cereal rye as a cover crop. One of the biggest drawbacks is the way it can really jump and get away from you in just a couple of days if you can not get in the field to control it. Good luck with that. I am in Costa Rica this week but I see another line of storms moving across Michigan today and in your direction.

Costa Rica is an interesting country. They have several huge tracts of land set aside as national parks, but they are not exactly like our national parks. Basically, they are not tourist attractions. There are roads through them and it seems like you can drive through them but there is no development and apparently no management of the land or timber allowed. As a nation they are committed to carbon neutrality by 2021 and have a well developed sense of resource conservation and use. Just like in the US :rolleyes::eek::o.

Tomorrow I will be speaking to a group of agricultural engineers and engineering students. I am planning to discuss animal traction in the context of sustainable management of timber resources. There are some great pictures of draft animal logging on this site, I think I will use a few of them.

[Tim Harrigan]

jac;26749 wrote:

…As Erika says a place on here for videos like this would be awesome… thanks again…

Here is a link to a video that I really like from John Plowden’s web site. I particularly like the part where he pulls down a hang up with his team.

http://www.plowdenhorselogging.com/2010/11/video.html

[Tim Harrigan]

Maybe I am targeting the wrong audience.

[Tim Harrigan]

@Countymouse 26664 wrote:

Good news. I am glad to see things are working well. I am in a mad rush trying to get crops in, but it shouldn’t be too long until I can send the buffer. I am excited to see the results.

Here is a look at 2 starting pulls at 10 measurements per second. It gives a pretty good sense of the relationship between pull and speed, and I am confident that we will be able to see a difference with the buffer if it does indeed exist. In reality it is going to take a lot of testing on different tools and in different conditions to sort this out with confidence. Andy, think about making two so they can be used with a team. I can drag things with a single but am not really set up to do tillage or pull a wagon with a single. If you look back at my work with the nylon rope the effective application was pretty specific.

[Tim Harrigan]

Nice yoke. So you ship your cattle up to high pastures in the summer?

[Tim Harrigan]

OK, it has taken longer then expected to get a new draft measurement system together to do some testing with Andy’s draft buffer but now I am ready to roll. Here is a graph of the pulling forces for a 600 lb stone boat drawn with my ox team last evening in a trial run. Read the pulling force (pounds) from the left vertical axis, time in seconds on the horizontal axis and travel speed in mph from the right vertical axis. The pulling force is shown with the orange diamonds, the speed with the green circles. I pulled this 8 second piece at random out of a much longer pull.

The sled with weights was 600 lbs, the average pulling force was 253 lbs but you can see the tension in the chain bounced rapidly between about 175 and 500 lbs. If you look closely you can see the spikes in the pulling force track the spikes in travel speed. This is one place we are curious to see if Andy’s draft buffer can have an effect on the pull. We would like to see the buffer spring store some of the energy exerted in the high-pull peaks and give it back in the low end troughs. We will see.

These forces were measured 5 time per second. I can measure up to 10 times per second. I did a series of starting pulls with my team last night at 10 measurement per second, have not looked at it yet, if it is interesting I will post it.

Andy, you may have to mud those crops in and send me that buffer.

[Tim Harrigan]

Take a pea.

[Tim Harrigan]

It does not seem like the 4 year old is giving you any indication that he has interest in being part of a team. I know it is hard to give up on a pair like that, you always think if we could only get over this hump. It would be OK if you had some idea when that might be, or even if there was a hump that you could get over. But in reality you are going to have a hard time building trust with this team, and without trust you are going to have a hard time relaxing and conveying that, and the enjoyment that you should have just won’t be there. There are a lot of good teams out there that would settle in for you and give you a lot of satisfaction. Find that team, don’t feel bad about letting this one go.

[Tim Harrigan]

wet and cold. Pastures have greened up a little but almost no growth.

[Tim Harrigan]

@Baystatetom 26498 wrote:

My 14 month old Holstein/shorthorns worked hard pulling the plow. My off steer pulls a lot harder then the near steer so it was difficult to keep them straight. I had a few crooked rows and several feet between a few, and even a couple that snaked back and forth across others…. I worked my team on a real job not just pulling a stoneboat for exercise, the team and I both gained experience, and most importantly I had fun…

Yes, the first time plowing reveals a lot of skills that need to be developed, experienced teams make it look easy. The off ox needs to stay in the furrow, they need to pull together and you need to keep the plow running straight and level. Did you sense that they were wandering because they did not understand how to follow the furrow, were they struggling a little with the load, or a bit of both? Plowing is pretty stout work for 14 month old steers. Were you driving from behind, or did you have someone drive the team while you guided the plow?

[Tim Harrigan]

Poor weather can make 5 acres look pretty big.

[Tim Harrigan]

I found this if anyone is interested in the results of the long-term RR alfalfa trial in Michigan.

http://www.msuweeds.com/files/RRalfalfaFactSheet2011.pdf

[Tim Harrigan]

I was at a meeting a month or so ago where the results of a long-term (5 years, I think) evaluation of RR alfalfa compared to a non-RR line was reported. They found no yield advantage, no quality advantage, no increase in # of plants per square foot over time, no benefit at all that I recall.

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