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@Eli 39607 wrote:

The way I see it is I don’t have to dump gas in my horse every time I use her and I have to feed her any way. Eli

Well, that’s how I feel about oxen, I’ve got to feed them anyway if I’m going to eat him later. But I’ve no intention of keeping a just for riding horse in the near future, so I won’t be feeding one unless I decide it would be useful enough to be worth keeping.

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@dominiquer60 39603 wrote:

Sounds like you should start reading some of the old horse threads 🙂

Yeah, I did do some reading when I first toyed with the idea of draft animals, but it has been awhile, and there is a huge difference between reading and doing with such a large animal. Even Great Danes are getting large enough to be hard to handle safely when they’re not calm.

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@carl ny 39601 wrote:

I don’t know how big these guys are or the build so it’s hard to tell.Mowing would be the hardest thing you mentioned,you wouldn’t want much over a 4ft. bar.

That’s almost as long as the longest BCS bar, so it wouldn’t be a huge step down from there. (I’m avoiding getting a full sized tractor for now so I won’t get too addicted to fast mowing.)
@carl ny 39601 wrote:

As far as the other stuff,you have to load to the size of your horses. I’ve seen a mini pull two people in a cart,as long as it was good going. HTH

Right, so I’d want to drag one or two logs at a time instead of a sled full… Since I’m just looking at firewood for our house (pleasure stove and fireplace, propane takes care of most of the heating) I’m not worried about haling a whole lot in one shot, and it’s only 1/4 mile or so from the wood lot to the house. There is some steep bits on the way though, so I would need to be conservative with loads. Draft dogs generally are not expected to haul more than 3x their own weight, and then only with a well balanced cart on good paths, is there a guideline like that for horse?

So it’s possible, but still not sure it’s a great idea for a novice to take them on. They’re working on me, they come to see me every time I take a pasture walk. Their real asset is a built in horse sitter, and I can probably get them for a greatly reduced price (maybe free) if I take them as this summer’s rent for the Alpacas. (He should know by fall if he’s gong to be able to build a new barn or not.)

@carl ny 39601 wrote:

P.S. Are you right in Rochester or where? I live outside of Lowville,N.Y. ,if you know where that is.About 150 from you.

We’re moving another half hour east, to Wayne County.

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So they could do a little garden plowing and wood hauling? Mowing? They’d certainly be able to pull a small pleasure cart, my dog is big enough to pull a one passenger cart.

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My stepmother says I have to get rid of it, and I most certainly will not.

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@oxspan 39586 wrote:

I just hate to see good stuff turned into lamps. Good wagons turned into lawn ornaments so they can rot down to nothing.

Sadly, these kinds of things are the closest most folk get to real draft equipment. I’d rather see another useful thing made from it for people to see and remember than have it left to rot or put in a burn pile.

I’ll get/make a new one when I get my own oxen.

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We did successfully close. I’m going crazy with packing right now, as we were not originally planning to get out there until March, but my city job let me go the week after we closed, which removed all incentive to stay in the city. I should have new work coming soon further out towards the new house, and we did have some cushion left over after closing, so we should be fine, and can even get a few things fixed.

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Hoping to close this week. I’m somehow still employed at the old job, but I’m trying to find something new before the axe falls here. Things are very busy here with paperwork and interviews.

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Update: We are so very close to getting our farm. We made an offer and are past most of the contingencies, scheduled to close in January. Unfortunately, I loose my job at the end of the month, so I’ll be having to talk to the bank about that tomorrow.

If things still go through, we’ll have 17 acres, with 9 lease-able next door. (We pretty much have to lease it, the pasture lines don’t follow the property line.)

I think my first priority is an accountant, who can tell me what the minimum I need to do to qualify the land as agricultural for tax purposes (I’m hoping I can just get it contract hayed) so I can build up slowly to the operation I want to do.

If the deal falls through, I need to do some long and hard thinking about what we want next. We have enough cash on hand to put down a sizable down-payment on a nice suburban house close to my husband’s job, and I could work on my shoe making skills and have a decent work at home income, but we both love the country so much…

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@Farnorthfarmer 38079 wrote:

he makes the point that it isn’t how much land you have it it is how much land you can manage and properly fertilize so for me that would be two acres to start lmao.

Yeah, I wish land came like computers that I could just add on an acreage upgrade to my existing house as I needed it. Unfortunately hubby doesn’t want to move with a plan to move again for a later upgrade, so I have to figure out what we’ll be able to grow into.

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Hrm… Duly noted: oxen taste just fine…

I’m still not really wedded to any particular plan with cattle, I need to do one thing at a time and expand my skills slowly. I think part of my attachment to more acreage is that there are more options. You can always decide you need less land, and plant sugar maples on the excess land, you have to move if the operation you’re planning will require more land.

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I’ve done some weaving before. Make sure you have enough material to overcome the stretchiness of plastic bags, and braid very flat (a learned skill) so you don’t create pressure points where some of the weave is tighter than others. Expect this to take awhile to be done right. Braiding goes pretty quick if you don’t care about it being straight, but usually a quick braid will have a twist to it.

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@Countymouse 35697 wrote:

I am not sure I what the heavy investment in oxen refers to. Bottle bulls of major breeds make good oxen and are dirt cheap. If younwant to work oxen eventually there is going to be a big investment in you time no matter how you do it. You are going to spend money on feed for cattle whether you work them or not, and they are beef no matter what. It kinda like hearing someone say ” I want to learn to drive a truck, so i am going to buy a truck and let it sit in my driveway for several years. Then i’ll sell that truck and buy a second truck that i will actually drive.” Why not just drive the truck? It’s just sitting there… I believe there would always be potential work for a team of oxen on 20-40 acres, but if you are going to be doing it all with a tractor or something else, perhaps the effort isn’t worth it. Perhaps it would be helpful to think about what exactly you want to do with 20-40 acres. Depending on how and what you do on this land, this can be a bigger bite than you can chew. I will admit I sometimes struggle with 12.

I was under the impression that A) working them made them tougher, that critters meant for consumption should have the good life, and if you eat a working ox you’ve got to be careful how you cook him. B) They’re old enough to eat before they’re old enough for their full adult working load as oxen. You seem to indicate that you just use your beefers as oxen and then still slaughter them as soon as they’re grown?

Do you make your own yokes or did you have to buy them? Working with young steers you’d need to upgrade the yoke frequently?

I’m not intending to till more than 3 or so acres, most of the 40 acres would be forest and pasture, and I doubt I’ll even have all the pasture fenced in the first year.

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Thanks for the detailed numbers! I’m looking for 20-40 acres, I’m not dependent on income from it, but I can’t afford to take a yearly loss, so I do need to have some profit centers to offset my growing critters/veggies for the table. Hubby wants to keep working and does well. Sounds like a lot of you with less land do well with chickens. Do you slaughter your own? Do you have any special facilities for butcher, or do you just seasonally set up your equipment in a corner of the barn/yard?

Countrymouse, I’m interested to hear about your oxen on 12 acres. I’ve been interested in oxen, but on very small acreage I was not sure they’d be worth the trouble of keeping/training. I probably won’t try to raise any oxen for a number of years, but it’s in the back of my brain. I want to raise a few beef cattle first, and get used to handling them, before I invest heavily in a pair I can’t afford to make big mistakes with.

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I’ve bought rabbit meat in NY slaughtered under the poultry exemption. There is certainly no enforcement stopping the practice.

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