Working Cow

Several years ago, the was a magazine write up (Small Livestock Journal?) about working draft dairy cows . The write up was a about a German fellow that designed an adjustable collar so he could work a different cow each day.

Before we decided to make a pair of hames, we had considered making a heavy duty collar by coiling up a good section of old garden hose to fit, and then wrapping it with duct tape.

A garden hose collar could be unwrapped and reshaped/resized as your calf grows.

Lynda

Millie doesn't have horns either, naturally polled, that's why I figured the regular yokes wouldn't work well.

What a great thread! I have been thinking about this also. For such a small acreage i can't justify a horse to feed all winter. I was wondering about a jersey what are your thoughts on them. I was wondering if they would be to small?

I know a man who grew up in jamaca
He told me they used the milk cow for plowing the huge garden, and the mule for riding to town

I was talking to a guy at Busch Gardens who was driving one of their sets of 2 oxen. He was telling me that usually the dairy breeds are used for oxen, because they have thicker legs than beef breeds

I think most people use dairy breeds for oxen because the bull calves are readily available, are relatively expensive, and the fact that you bottle raise them gives you extra time to gentle and work with them.

Horns are not necessary on a single yoke. You use a britchen harness anyway to hold the yoke even on the neck and it functions to hold the yoke back from slipping off as well. Yokes are better for working cattle than hames or collars due to the anatomy of bovine shoulder. Read "OXen a teamsters guide" by Drew Conroy.

Devons are known as a tripple purpose cow, milk,meat, & draft. We have one though she is not trained. I do know she is much stronger and very smart compared to our Jersey. I've tried to train a dumb dog and won't do so again. I think intellegence is important if you want an easy trainer. As I said Devon's are very strong the Jersey has no chance when they start the push to the feed bucket. I estimate my jersey at 900 lbs and the Devon at 1100-1200 lbs. The Devon is a bit shorter and her legs are much shorter then the Jersey as her torso is very large. I suspect a strong squat animal like a Devon will make the best draft animals because the English have a short heavy work horse that can outdo all of our taller heavy breeds. If I remember correctly the book Farmer Boy in the Little House Series describes the way they trained their young ox. It might be worth a read.

Many years ago my family used oxen for logging. I have photos of some of them hooked up to a load of logs. They used 6 at a time. From the photos they were mixed breeds. The work was very hard on them, they were all steers, they were skinny. But back then there wasn't any fat people either.