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Hi all,
Green Mountain College is having a 3-pad collar donated to us. We have done a little bit of work in a single yoke before, so we’ll be sure to share whatever insights/comparisons that we come up with from trying out this system. Might even try to bring it to field days?

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Has anyone tried three abreast with 2 yoked together and a third in single yoke/collar? I’ve tried the unicorn hitch, but I wasn’t too happy with the results.
Where are good threads on modifying equipment for 3 rather than 2?
I’m looking for different ways to fit animals that don’t have teammates into a farm that has a team as well.

Thanks

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Dr. Minhorst will have an english version available next year. Until then, we have google translate, which reads it as “Modern Tableware for working cattle.”

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Thanks Andrew. The 3-abreast plowing photo is absolutely beautiful. Those images are getting lots of wheels spinning in our heads here. I’ve been very stuck in a neck yoke world. One of the ideas that it brings to mind is more flexibility in size and class of animals—> example: doing farm work with cows rather than steers (or a mixed hitch of both) seems a lot more feasible with harness rather than yokes.

That’s a good point about expense of harness, especially since a yoke can be made with local materials. I wonder, how closely linked is are the dominance of the neck yoke in the American tradition and the idea of oxen as the choice of the poor farmer and the pioneer?
Basically: if you could afford harness and collars, you probably could afford a horse, and generally, whether due to cultural or agronomic reasons, farmers who could afford horses preferred them? I know there are ALOT of good reasons for any tradition.
Excited to see what other folks have to offer.

Thanks,
Ben

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Hi charly, I have an off topic question:
I poked around that website a little, found it very interesting!!
Is there a specific reason that some German farmers like to hitch a team in two single head yokes, like in this picture:
http://www.zugrinder.de/files/zugrinder/englisch/past_events/badwindsheim2011/galerie-badwinsheim/BadWindsheim2011.jpg
Are oxen ever hitched 3 or 4 abreast in this manner?

Don’t think I can make it to Germany, but its great to feel part of a global community.

-Ben

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Sorry to do that to you Geoff!

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Hi andy,
Is the grass regrowing at all? Are the cattle going back to graze it? If they are, it may be worth backfencing. In the fall, grasses are focusing their energies of initiating new tillers and building up sugar reserves for the winter, so interfering with this process could reduce growth next spring, or increase winterkill or weed competition. If the grass is done growing (which it shouldn’t be for a few more weeks) you can’t really “overgraze” it, though pugging or too short of a residual could still damage your stand.

On the other hand, overgrazing some areas in the fall could have some benefits, for instance if you plan to frost-seed clover or other legumes, or if you don’t make hay and want to reduce excess growth from the spring flush. You could try to build your “Grazing wedge” in the fall by leaving a greater residual in some places than others.

These things also depend a lot on species composition: legumes tend to be much more affected by late-fall grazing than grasses, and some grasses tend to better utilize late fall reserves for greening up earlier in the spring. Brome grass, for us at least, will green up extremely early if it gets substantial fall rest.
I’m not quite sure how grazing it after dormancy will affect this.

Our working cattle eat only hay (the lowest quality that we have) over the winter so they tend to maintain or gain in condition over winter, even if its late-cut grass.
Are your animals full grown or still growing?

Hope some of that helps, or at least gets you thinking about some of these issues.

Best,
Ben

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I’ve thought about using grazing to assist in terminating rye, but you’d have to wait until its fairly tall or else grazing will do very little to actually kill the plant, and may just make it more vigorous. Grazing vegetative wheat that is destined to be harvested for grain has been common in various areas at various times, and when the animals are removed before the stem elongates, it may not harm yields at all. This is a subject that I recall tevis being knowledgeable about.

Rye is killed relatively easily by mowing (or rolling) once it starts to shed pollen, but at that point, it wouldn’t be very palatable to the animals.

I’d be willing to guess that grazing it hard around boot stage could substitute for some, though not all, tillage on the rye.
I guess we’ll just have to try it.

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A broader comment on no-till grain production:
I know a farmer in my area who drills winter rye into his pastures in September. He has the cattle graze the pastures down hard before seeding for vegetation control, and the rye usually takes well. He uses the rye for high quality late-fall / early spring rather than grain, however.

In general, its hard to imagine how any mulch (less than a foot deep) or crop competition is going to stop or slow down cool season grasses in the spring in the northeast, they grow like gangbusters in May and June.

In Australia, many farmers use “no-kill cropping” by overseeding small grains on warm season pastures. No herbicides, no tillage, just a seed-drill. Their winters are much milder than ours, so the grains are able to grow all winter while the summer grasses are dormant, this is obviously not going to be possible here.

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Hi Eric,
I’m interested in this if the offer is still out.

If this became a long-term thing, the spring is probably better, but we could try out a couple acres this fall.

The team is not mine, rather it belongs to my place of work, so things would also need to be cleared through my boss, though he is very interested in this project.

If you’re still looking, contact me to make some arrangements.

-Ben Dube
Research Tech
Cerridwen Farm @ Green Mtn College

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Hi Tom,
Thanks for the offer.
My degree is in sustainable agriculture, and my logging experience amounts to using a chainsaw a couple times.

I also have a friend in VT who has access to a team of oxen (though he has only limited driving experience) and some woods, a chainsaw and a forestry degree, so I hope to be spending some time with him as well.

Early January is overall the best for me, as you’re not TOO close by, but we can try to make some firmish plans sometime in the fall.

Thanks again for the offer and I do hope it works out
Ben

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A couple of thoughts to add:
-I like to leave 2-3 inches of stubble. Depending on how mature the grass is, there might not be much leaf area in the stubble, but many bunch grasses (timothy, orchardgrass) store much of their carbohydrates in the lower stem. This should have a pretty dramatic impact on regrowth.
-Increasing cutting height should increase the quality of the hay, as the bottom parts of the plant are almost entirely structural (high in fiber) compared to the leaf and flower tissues higher up.

-As Tim pointed out, close mowing/grazing tends to favor plants other than grasses, especially legumes. Since Alfalfa and Red clover regrow from carbohydrates stored in taproots, while grasses regrow from residual leaf area and carbohydrates stored in the base of their stems, mowing straight into dirt would favor them over the grasses. Since many dairy farmers around here are disposing of a lot of nitrogen on their hayfields, the low or non-existent residual is probably pretty important to keep the alfalfa from being overcome by the grass.

-Also Tim stated with “adequate moisture” it is difficult to graze too hard if animals are moved on quickly. I agree, though I’m reconsidering how hard I’ve been grazing some of my poorer pasture this summer, given the lack of moisture. Here in VT, we’re not in drought, but we are definitely drier than ideal. The patches of grass next to cow pies feel so much more moist than the patches of white clover and plantain that the cattle grazed straight to the ground. Soil cover prevents evaporation, so residual is useful in this way too.

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Hi Vicki,
See these two pictures of the hitch.
We used 3 different configurations to keep the pole from dropping while still using the evener.

1.) A second chain attached to the heel team’s calabash.
2.) a “safety chain” that made a loop through the hardware on the end of the tongue (this worked the best except for a HORRIBLE tangle when I tried to unhitch that I almost had to use a hacksaw on!)
3.) (Pictured) the tongue hanging from a chain.

I feel like the T-pin would have worked the best, but we didn’t have one.

The single-tree is attached almost directly to the evener by a very short piece of chain. This works a lot better than a longer piece of chain, which has severe risks of tangles and doesn’t seem to promote even pulling.

The single-tree hanging down right in front of the heel team was a great way of keeping them from trying to overrun the lead steer, and teaching them the meaning of “easy,” though adjusting the hitch such that the singletree doesn’t hit their faces was a tad tricky.

Thoughts anyone?

Thanks,
Ben

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thanks vicki, that is definitely helpful. We had a 5ish foot section of chain between the lead steer’s swingletree and the team behind. Attaching the swingletree directly to the evener seems to be a better idea, and the length of the evener should keep the angle of draft appropriate. That should prevent the heel team from running over any chain as well. We’ll try it that way next time.

Did you use the evener with equipment with a pole? If so, how did you set it up? As I can see it, the pull chain can’t be used to hold the tongue in the ring, because if the pull chain is tight enough to do this, the vertical evener cannot do its job. Is this right?

Thanks again.

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We used a unicorn this past week, because our off ox aggravated his hock while haying. We put the nigh up front, with a team of yearlings in back, to pull the hay wagon to the barn.

Next time we rig them up like this, I’ll take pictures and post them.

Overall, it worked well enough, but it led to a few questions.

1.) The yearlings wanted to keep a faster pace than the single in front, and almost got tangled in the chain running back from the lead steer. Is there a way to avoid this problem? (Other than teaching the boys to “easy” better! Which we are doing anyways.)

2.) What is the best way to use a vertical evener on a piece of equipment with a tongue so that the evener hangs vertically, but the tongue can’t slip off?

Thanks,
Ben

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