Oxen Tales: The Beginning

This is our future, hopefully, but we are still several years away from it. Our boys are just one month old at this point, just getting past that critical stage that weakened dairy bull calves come in- will they live or will they die? Yes, they got their colustrum and about one week of whole, raw milk at the dairy they were born at. After that it was our turn to care for them, trying to keep them alive and gaining on nutritionally-inferior powdered milk. At some point we hope to have a nurse cow if we are going to keep buying inexpensive dairy bull calves. But we sorta lept into getting this batch of 4 calves before we had everything perfect, knowing that it will take two years before they are ready to even use as oxen. This is a long-term process. If we get it right, these guys will be with us for 10, maybe 12 years.

Jerseys are a pretty light-bodied breed for oxen, but easy to come by and handle for new teamsters like ourselves. At full size, we will be lucky to have them weigh in at 1,500-1,600 pounds. On the other hand, a Milking Shorthorn steer, a sought after oxen breed, will get up to 2,300 pounds at full size. But you can see in the picture above that Jerseys can get plenty big enough to do some farmwork or logging, which are the things we hope to use them for.

Why oxen? If you are like me, you maybe thought that oxen were a special breed. In my head I had always pictured a much hairier, hardy-looking animal, more akin to a yak. But any cattle breed can be transformed into a work animal with the right amount of patience and training. Just make sure they will have horns- a polled cattle breed won't make a good oxen. The horns are necessary for keeping the yokes on. My husband and I have been enamored with the concept of draft animal power for some time now- it just didn't exist much in the part of California we farmed in so it was difficult to gain the necessary skills. During our travels in 2011, we made sure to visit a couple farms that used draft animals. The first was Green Gate Farms in Austin, Texas that used a pony for pulling a small cart and humans around. Next was Claddagh Farm in Montville, Maine that used draft horses for cultivation, haying, and logging. After that we sought out Tillers International in Kalamazoo, Michigan for some hands-on training, this time with oxen. At Tillers we took an oxen basics class for one week and stayed on the following week to volunteer with their hay harvest. We also got a chance to work a bit with their Belgian draft horses, providing me one of the most spiritual experiences of my life using a team to mow down a field of cover crops.

My hubbie making our oxen yoke at Tillers International class, Aug. 2011

There are many reasons to consider draft animals- directly they don't burn fossil fuels, they can be fed on home-grown forages, their waste products are fertilizer, they can reproduce themselves (if given the chance!), their maintenance costs are usually in the form of your time & patience, they have more personality than a tractor, they can bring fun to your farming experience, they can appreciate over time instead of depreciating like a tractor (a well-trained draft team can fetch a pretty penny), and they are very versatile around a farm/homestead. You can use them for soil tillage, weeding, harvesting certain crops, mowing, haying, moving materials, logging, cutting firewood, collecting maple syrup, setting fence, and more. Can a single tractor do that? Probably not.

We have decided to start with oxen because of their low costs of entry. You can buy dairy bull calves for $10-40 each. You can make your own yoke. Cattle don't suffer the inumerable maladies that equines do. The costs of exit are low too- if that ox doesn't work out for some reason, you can eat it! Of course you could do the same with equine, we just don't have much of a culture of eating horse-flesh in this country. The drawbacks of oxen over horses or mules is probably their speed. At this point, we aren't trying to farm hundreds of acres with them, so I don't really see slow speed as a problem. Their slowness also makes them easier to handle by children and we hope to engage our daughter in training and using these guys.

Here is what our "oxen-to-be" look like so far. Keep in mind they are only one month old! We keep them in a well bedded horse stall during the frigid nights and let them romp outside once the temp gets above 20 during the day. Feeding includes 3x day non-medicated 22% protein milk replacer, electrolytes, and probiotics. We are also giving them around .5lb/day of 18% protein textured feed ration made up of oats, mollasses, & vitamins. Starting this month we will let them out onto some grass for a couple hours a day to begin their grazing habit as their little rumens develop. As for training, we are just walking each of them with a halter every couple days, getting them used to it and spending time brushing and petting them. I have to admit, it's a lot of fun having these guys in our life. I call them "my boys".

Four Jersey bull calves that have adopted us

Comments

[susan macdonald]

We have a team of working steers.They are also jerseys. We have had a great time logging with them and they also plow.We had them first yoked at two weeks old. Best of luck with yours. Never turn your back on them.

[Bill Hubert]

Great article is there any chance I can take it and copy it onto my own blog

[Tara]

How timely this post is! I just got back from a friend's farm where I got to give 'driving' her oxen a go. She has two six year old, purebred Jerseys. You may be interested to know that her Jerseys weigh in at 2300lbs each. They don't have horns either and there are no issues with the yoke. They are beautiful and lovely in every way and working with them only confirms our decision to use oxen power on our farm.

I'm heading to Tillers this year for an oxen course. It's our intention to use oxen in our wood lot when harvesting our firewood and for any other task where brute strength is required. I'm really looking forward to reading about your experiences. We raise Highland cattle so these guys are a whole new ball game for us. I think they're absolutely adorable. Congratulations on taking the first step with your new boys.

[Rebecca Thistlethwaite]

Iain- you can get bull calves just about anywhere- at auctions, from dairies, from cattle ranches. Dairy bull calves are cheaper- we picked ours up for $10 each. Any cattle breed can be made into oxen with training, however some are better than others. Milking shorthorn is a good breed, but hard to find. Holsteins are fine and easy to find around the country.

[Iain]

That is a great perspective.

One of my friends used Clydesdales to do logging and it was very interesting to hear what he had to say.

I never thought that oxen could be used in the same way. I really like the idea of using them instead tractor for some of the smaller tasks that you might have around your farm.

Where you find oxen these days? Can you still purchase them at auction?

[Rebecca Thistlethwaite]

Jsl32- I am not really sure, but probably between $2,000-3,000 for a team? I don't see them advertised very often on the West Coast, but you will probably see them in New England for sale.

[Jsl32]

What does a well-trained draft team fetch?

[Rebecca Thistlethwaite]

Bruce- we plan to castrate them at 6 months, so hopefully that will prevent them from being total turds. Our oxen manual shows Jerseys as being a little flighty, but overall a decent oxen breed. But if they don't have the right dispositions, we will eat them (part of the beauty of oxen over other draft animals). They will be big, healthy steers and Jersey meat is reputed to be the tastiest. Thanks for the concern.

[Bruce King]

Dairy bulls have a reputation for getting mean; one of the grassfed dairies I visited used bulls (vs. AI) for their herd, and found that they had to sell them at 2 years of age pretty consistently.

[d.a.]

They're adorable!

If you don't already know/subscribe, Small Farmer's Journal always carries articles on using draft animals... it's a great quarterly mag.