[fabian]

@sanhestar 5743 wrote:

Question for the ones that drive with collars or forehead yokes: how about using a miss matched team with this type of harnessing? Different length of chains, I think.

Why different length of chains ?
With similar chains the heads of the team are at the same place. only the rear ends are in different position (shorter/longer). but the important part is the placement of the heads.

Wolfgang

[fabian]

my experience is that the difference in the height is no problem. Bella is 1,38m and Molly was, when I started her about 1,20m.
I made the experience that in draft the necks of the animals are nearly on the same level.
besides: when it would be a problem: how should a same-size team plow a field ? one ox is in the furrow and the other is on higher level on unplowed land.

[fabian]

@Vicki 5674 wrote:

My ideal is to have cows that are somewhat trained, then leave the calves on them, and work with the calves. Cattle that are in a herd have more “fear of God” in them, IMHO, which I think helps them to follow and trust my leadership.

So I do. Trained and handling-used mother cows do a lot of the work i had to do training bottle-fed calves. (hope that you understand my clumsy English ;))

Wolfgang

[fabian]

for keeping this thread ahead:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d12yrYlHeYQ&feature=related

[fabian]

@sanhestar 5420 wrote:

Rotes Höhenvieh aka Devon.

Sabine

I thought so…..Vogelsberg…..
The Lamborghini-Breed 😉
Everything is possible

Wolfgang

[fabian]

@sanhestar 5409 wrote:

…. why not go the short way and buy calves? QUOTE]

I do not agree, that buying calves is “the short way”. Calves have to be fed two times a day with milk or milkpowder milk. It takes time to get the first and bring it on temperature and the second way (powder milk) is in the EU not without shortfalls since the content of animal fats in it is forbidden (because of BSE).
It needs some time until you can hitch them up.
I prefer “learning by doing”. Teaching the animals to go at a halter and then hitch them up within three days. So they can learn the commands while pulling their first (light) load. Ok, I have always an experienced teammate, which helps me training the novice, like it was usual in my area. Molly, my two year old off cow was hitched after four lessons with a sledge to a waggon. And it worked good. I think she saw the calmness of her mother and so the noise of the iron-wheeled waggon didn’t disturb her.

Which breed is the heifer you are in contact with ?

With a sorry for my clumsy English
Wolfgang

[fabian]

I think, it has something to do with what you expect from your animals.
I must not have a showteam, I don’t refuse using of a halter-rope. I only need a team which goes when it should go, which stands when it should stand, which goes left/right, when left/right is requested and back, when they should do this.
I have used up to now only mother raised calves and it works. Ok. They are not from a big herd and the mothers are used to be handled.

[fabian]

@sanhestar 5307 wrote:

I found this story yesterday while surfing

http://www.h-bensberg.de/html/kuhjochschnitzer.html

it’s about the last yoke carver from Ferndorftal, Germany: August Menn. He was a cartwright (waggon-maker) and started carving and selling yokes in 1899

He would pride himself in carving working and showing yokes, fitted to the individual animal.

There’s an interesting paragraph about forehead yokes used before the 1930s. Apparently the shafts of the waggon where put through the rings of the yoke and arrested with pins, fixing the head of the animal. And apparently all padding couldn’t prevent that the vibrations from the cart and the kicks from the shafts would be transmitted to the skull of the oxen/cow.

Therefore this type of yoke was forbidden after 1930 and replaced by yokes that allowed the oxen/cow to be hitched with chains.

Maybe here lies the reason for some of the resentments against forehead yokes.

There is a mistake in the article, which shows, that the author has no experience in oxen:
He writes “Vorkopfjoche” what means forehead yokes, but he means head yokes, in Germany called “Genickjoche”.
The forehead yoke was never forbidden in Germany as the double-head yoke is (whether the single head yoke also is (was) forbidden, I don’t know.)
What he means you can see here: http://www.bilder-hosting.de/show/UKWNT.html

With a sorry for my clumsy English
Wolfgang

[fabian]

@bivol 4924 wrote:

this is a forehead yoke. they have previously been mentioned in a few threads so far.
i read in a book “oxen;a teamster’s guide” that a forehead yoke causes skull damage.

I think, Drew Conroy quotes with this sentence Dr. Minhorst, who is a declared opponent of the forehead yoke. Contrary to Conroy, who says, that any harness has its strengths and its weakness, Minhorst believes the 3-pad collar as the one and only harnessing-system for bovines. In my area nearly all bovines were worked in forehead yokes and most farmers i told with, refused the use of the 3-pad collar. it was not the big success which is said about it. The mistakes which can be made with the 3-pad collar and the injuries it may cause, are much more and heavier than the disadvantages the forehead yoke has.
@bivol 4924 wrote:

they can be made either of wood or of iron. both are padded. in a book from germany i have (modernes geschirr fur arbeitsrinder, rolf minhorst), where the head yoke is not mentioned positively, the forehead yoke is said to cause far less discomfort than a head yoke.

see above 😉

@bivol 4924 wrote:

a wooden forehead yoke. personally i’m sceptical about this type. i believe they could cause damage….

could it be that it causes damage only when they push with entire force?

but does it cause damage to head?

As it is padded : why schould it cause more damages than the iron mades ?

[fabian]

@bivol 4889 wrote:

unlike horses who like to work ……

a professional horse logger told me, that his horses don’t like to enter the trailer in the morning, because they know, that a long working day is expecting them…….
so I think, that horses don’t like working more than oxen…..

[fabian]

The 8 ” “yoke for developing countries” is a simple squared timber (8×10 cm), 140cm long. The width is the 10cm site, the depth the 8cm site. The neckseats are shaped and smoothed. The rest of the yoke is rough like bought in the market. In the middle of the yoke, for dropping the hitchpoint, I have glued a second wooden piece (50 cm longs) which is secured by 4 screws, which connect two ironplates (at the top and at the bottom of the yoke).
It works not like a simple withers yoke but like a neckyoke.
It’s not pretty fromm its design, but good for the aninmal’s health, like demanded from drew Conroy.
I should take a pic and show it here.

With a sorry for my clumsy English
Wolfgang

[fabian]

that would be about 438 Euros. I think, it is a fair price for the kind of yokes Tim Huppe makes and offers. It took a day of dusty work to shape the yoke beam, not included the time, that was needed for adjusting the irons, covering and steaming the bows.
For “research” I made a simplified yoke for “developing countries”, but including everything, a properly made yoke needs: smooth neckseats, dropped hitchpoint and well fitting bows. That took only a percentage of time of making an “original american style yoke”, but it works as the same matter.

With a sorry for my clumsy English
Wolfgang

[fabian]

using forehead-yokes up to this time,in octobre 2007 I built my first american style neck yoke (because I’m faszinated of its simplicity and I need equipment for my one-axled cart for driving it with a team).
As I am a professionel basket-maker, I made the bows from Rattan-poles.
May be, that they will bend under very heavy load. but they will serve my purpose. Contrary to wooden bows, they may bend, but, if made from good Rattan, wouldn’t break, even under heavy load.
But the most advantage of the Rattan-bows is their flexibility. It’s not difficult, to use a 6″ bow in an 8″ yoke. So I can yoke different sized animals togehter and I can use my yoke more or less for every animal I’m training (I usually beginn training with 1 to 1,5 year)

[fabian]

as Bivol is from Croatia/Europe, I think, it will be the breed “Boskarin”
which you can see here: http://www.istrianet.org/istria/fauna/cattle/boskarin-album.htm

[fabian]

@sanhestar 4540 wrote:

Assuming that I manage a working cow the same way as a dairy or calves-for-meat cow (don`t know how you call them in English).

Who`s to say that I HAVE to keep her pregnant and with a calve at her side all the time?

You MUST not have her pregnant all the time. I had a cow, which had two times a rest of calving. But at the fall of that years, she fatter than it would be good for her, because she had the same pasture than her mates…..
And if you won’t breed them, but they are healthy, you will have every three weeks conflicts with your neighbours

[Author]

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