The Organic Experimental Engine (oxen)
(Page 4 of 9)
May/June 1973
By John R. Scarlett
FOOD AND SHELTER
RELATED CONTENT
If you know how to feed and house cows—or, better still, beef cattle—then you know how to care for oxen. Like a beef steer, an ox needs only good hay, or fair hay, and grain (see the excerpt from AHerdsman's Handbook by R.J. Holliday, DVM in MOTHER NO. 18).
John and Paul each get half a bale of medium-grade hay morning and night plus a pound of grain—ground corn and oats—in the morning and two pounds each evening (more when they're working). During the grass-growing months we'll pasture the span and grain the animals only when we're working them. We water John and Paul once a day when they aren't being used, twice when they are.
Shelter for oxen can be very simple. Even here in northern New York—where winter temperatures regularly dip to minus 20° F—a team needs only a windbreak until well into December, when light snow might necessitate putting them into a building of some kind.
We're lucky enough to have an old dairy barn with a concrete floor and gutter. The gutter is good for keeping the animals out of their own manure but the concrete is hard on oxen (especially if the animals are heavy). We were told that one large Canadian team was crippled by spending an entire winter on such a surface. Exactly why concrete should be avoided we're not sure . . . certainly it's cold and hard, but dairy cows stand on it through the cold months without harm. Still, to play safe, we built open stalls with elm sides and hemlock plank floors tilted slightly to allow urine to drain away. Clay or earth underfoot is considered ideal.
YOKES
Until this fall, Liz and I supposed we knew what an ox yoke looks like. But what we were accustomed to seeing was only one kind: the stationary neck yoke, in which two hickory bows slide and lock into one beam. Like the unusual horn yoke (which is worn across the forehead) large stationary neck yokes are made from strong woods such as yellow birch and ash. Such a hitch is suited for pulling heavy loads short distances, and is used almost exclusively at ox-pulling contests, where teams have hauled stoneboats weighing as much as 26,000 pounds.
When a span must walk for long periods doing logging or farm work, however, the stationary yoke doesn't allow enough freedom of movement to permit the individual ox to find his footing on broken ground. We were told that to use it in such situations would result in "hauling" (one steer leaning into the other to keep his balance) . . . a habit that reduces the coordinated strength of the team and increases the chance of injury. Consequently, the only coupling we've used so far is the sliding neck yoke, in which each bow can move from side to side independently of the other by means of pivoting irons SST , Gas Pivoting irons located at the center of the device.
It seems to me that either kind of neck yoke—stationary or sliding—wouldn't be too difficult to make, especially if yarn had the irons from an old framework. Apparently many different woods make acceptable yoke beams: cherry, tamarack root, locust, beech, oak, basswood and—naturally—hornbeam, The only taxing part of the job might be steaming and bending the hickory bows.
Page:
<< Previous 1 |
2 |
3 | 4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
Next >>
