capabilities of oxen

I think it depends a lot on their condition for working. The oxen pulling the wagon trains west years ago likely got little chance to rest. On the other hand, my team would be hard pressed to work all morning even thought I would be done long before them.

Charly, no doubt there are limits and conditions to the general statement I made about oxen working all day. Perhaps I was irresponsible to toss out such a generality without investigating and presenting the facts. Nonetheless, anecdotal evidence suggests the generality: many memories from New England of oxen that were worked in field and woodlot all day, then making a twelve mile trip into town in evening to deliver a wagon of firewood. The American great westward migration and the freight lines of the West. . . There are small times of “rest” in such work and some of it may be at a pace that oxen can chew cud.

I was also thinking of conditions of use in underdeveloped regions where oxen endure.

I know that in my county, a lot of produce farming, hay and grain farming and harvesting, logging, and maple sugaring, is done with horsepower. Those horses are fed and rested for over an hour midday. I don’t have all the physiology facts right now, but you inspire me to look into differences of blood sugar, muscle metabolism, glycogen storage and delivery, lactic acid etc. between the ruminants–cattle–and horses.

well, when i said they can’t economically compete, i meant as using oxen for profit in a logging company. they couldn’t compete in results (amount of timber in a given time) with horses and mules, red in oxen; a teamster’s guide a few people tried and no one did it for too long. ofcourse, no draft animal can compete with machinery in efficiency, but as you said, if other factors are taken in account, the animals can be a real competition.

now, i don’t know how the guys above did their work, or with how many oxen, but the main reason equines seem dominant in the animal logging bussiness is actually the nature of work. they are either used to log in enviremently sensitive areas, or work side-by-side with machinery. in both cases, especially in latter, i think they don’t get to haul out enormous tree trunks. so, the speed becomes more of an issue. and equines beat oxen in that regard.

another thing also reminds me: there’s a mountainous region in my country, where the population traditionally logged with draft animals in the past. the oxen were employed to drag the tree trunks out of woods, and horses to drag and pack wood too. the poorer people used oxen, and the better-off horses.
the advantages of oxen were: they were cheaper, could work without grain, but they had to have a day off after each working day, to rest. and they were slower.
the horses required grain, which had to be imported, but could work faster.

although, in really steep and hard terrain it is said only oxen could pull out large logs.
horses were also used to pack the wood out of forest.

the point is, that region was relatively poor, despite the large pine woods, and most of those who used horses made enough money and moved away in the lowlands. so i guess that also proves that horses, although more expensive, earn more, too.

true, Matt, the preferance to animals plays a great issue when thinking about labour needing to be done. i’d prefer oxen always.

I question the speed thing – we have accounts in this country of oxen working alongside horses in harness and keeping pace from 300 years ago, also of oxen ploughing as fast as horses and trotting in harness. Also in my own experience I don’t find them to be slower at all. There’s less jumping and prancing around (which is a good thing for me) and you wouldnt be able to hop on and jog all the way to market…but you don’t do that in logging anyway. Also, I believe in keeping my overheads down in order to increase my margin, oxen do that nicely in all areas so I would question the ‘economically viable’ thing too. Maybe horses do work faster, but at what cost? Does the time saved = enough extra money on the end price paid for the product to justify the use of something more expensive to obtain it?