[Git-Up-Doc]

A few years back I was in 4-H, and was for 14 or so years. 13 of those years I took a beef calf, and a couple of years I took 2 cattle at once (not oxen, a heifer and a market steer). I learned a few tricks when training single animals that will probably work well.

Tie a long rope to a tree if you don’t trust the animal. This rope should be attached to the halter and tied surely. Walk the animal around and if the animal runs keep up with it and when it runs out of rope say “Whoa”. After a few times the animal will learn not to because they think you’re the one holding it back. This will also work with a stubborn animal. Tie it to the tractor and have someone drive the tractor and you walk the animal. If it gets stubborn get the tractor to pull it for a short period of time. It will soon think you are the one pulling it and give in.
Also, just walk the animal around and just randomly stop, or turn left or right or back up with the animal. Don’t let the animal anticipate what it going to happen next so it will be more attentive to you and your commands. When I would help younger 4-H kids out with the animals I would tell them these tricks, they would look back at me as if to say “you expect me to do that ?” and then it would click in that I was over 6 feet tall and probably weighed a quarter the weight of the animal whereas they were quite a bit smaller than their calf.

try some of these tricks and just keep working with the animal, it will start to listen to your commands and not bolt.

[Git-Up-Doc]

My horse I just feed him hay and a bit of a mineral/vitamin pellet. He gets really fat out on pasture and it takes me forever to get him back to a reasonable weight after he’s been on pasture. Right now though he’s out in a paddock that has ben chewed up and muddied up with a few other horses getting free access to round baled hay. In the evening when we bring him in we give him a further 3 flakes.

He’s a 1500 lb belgian so not extremely large or small.

[Git-Up-Doc]

If you have your pictures uploaded to the internet you can use that [img]….[/img] command to post. What I did when I posted Biological Woodsmen’s picture I found his picture in the gallery and copied the URL address and put that in the [img]thing.

I realize now that when I uploaded my photos I did the[img]thing and I put them on as attachments too (unknowingly).

So, if you have your photos on the internet, just use[img]and dont worry about the manage attachments thing below, thats just meant for photos not uploaded to the internet.

[Git-Up-Doc]

Those look like weapons.

[Git-Up-Doc]

Ok, here are my horse’s shoes. This top pair are the shoes that I am going to go weld up tomorrow and put the borium on. they’ve got toe clips on them and the corks are made from cold rolled steel rod. He’s an older horse and I really don’t do a lot with him so he really only needs that little bit of cork. If you look close you can see the wear on these shoes.

[img]http://www.draftanimalpower.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=76&stc=1&d=1228856993[/img]

[img]http://www.draftanimalpower.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=77&stc=1&d=1228856993[/img]

These shoes shown above are from when my horse was a little younger, I’ve had him now for about 8 years. When I first got him my uncle did some logging with him and so these were the shoes he was equipped with. Quite a nice shoe, lots of grip. I had a man at home make them up and cork them up.
As you can probably guess the one on the top is the hind right, and the bottom one is the front left.

-Rod. I always put all 4 shoes on, but I have very minimal experience on just a single horse.

[Git-Up-Doc]

here is your picture Biological Woodsman.

[Git-Up-Doc]

Hey, Great. Looks like a very sturdy shoe with a lot of grip.

Just one question for you though Biological Woodsman, Do you find that the horse will slip on the ice and “skate” ?? I ask this because I was told that the older horsemen would put the toe cork on, and then the heel corks one would be welded on horizontally (just like the toe cork) and then one would be welded vertically. This would prevent the horse from “skating” across ice which could happen if all corks were put on the same way.

[Git-Up-Doc]

I found the article of the Pig killing the bobcat:

Heather is still recovering from wounds suffered while saving her family’s bacon from an intruder last week.

Her eye remains swollen and her snout scratched, but the Tamworth pig bested a bobcat that hopped into her outdoor pen hoping to snack on a piglet or two.

Bob Ottenbrite, who operates a small free-range farm in South Rawdon that specializes in endangered breeds, discovered the 20-kilogram cat’s lifeless body during his normal checks on Dec. 17.

“It must have been a pretty good fight because she has some scratches,” Mr. Ottenbrite said Thursday of the 230-kilogram sow as she rooted in the frozen ground nearby.

“I can just picture the bobcat attached to the pig’s head, scratching it, biting at the muzzle — the pig had the bobcat in its mouth shaking it around.”

Mr. Ottenbrite said the bobcat probably spotted a piglet and sprang over the 1.2-metre wire fence without realizing its protective mother was nearby. He surmised the cat chased a piglet to its wooden shelter from which an angry sow emerged suddenly.

“When they want to move, they can move extremely quickly,” he said of the pigs.

“They are capable of doing things like this because of their sheer size.”

Most of the bobcat’s bones had been crushed by the sow’s powerful jaws.

“You can see where the pig had grabbed her neck, and that’s probably what killed her,” he said. “And then she just wanted to make sure.

“We felt very badly for the bobcat, but on the other hand, we felt good that this breed of pig still has that instinct to look after its young.”

The reddish Tamworth pigs hail from either Ireland or Britain and are more closely related to the European wild boar than Babe.

The breed is critically endangered, and Mr. Ottenbrite raises them and other types of pigs and cows in large pens, letting them feed naturally on grass. They grow more slowly than pigs sold commercially and have a darker meat that tastes better, he said.

“We only name the ones we’re going to keep for breeding,” he said. “We named them after our redheaded friends.”

After the scrap, Heather was sidelined by a fever because her wounds had been infected by bacteria from the bobcat’s bites and scratches.

“She was just lying there shaking and she couldn’t get up,” Mr. Ottenbrite said.

He gave her a shot of penicillin that perked her up so much he hasn’t been able to get close enough since for a second needle.

“By the next day, she had gotten up and she was back to normal, so her own immune system was working,” he said.

He had seen the bobcat’s tracks in the snow on his 176-hectare property but hasn’t had much trouble with predators in the past other than a bald eagle that helped itself to a chicken occasionally.

“This is the very first time we’ve seen anything like this happen,” he said. “I imagine by next year we’ll have another bobcat move into the area. They have territories.”

This bobcat was obviously hungry because it was quite scrawny and was already sporting some porcupine quills in its nose, he said.

“She wasn’t having a good week,” he said. “She just made wrong decisions.”

Mr. Ottenbrite offered the cat’s carcass to the Natural Resources Department for study. Officials there were amused by the unusual story but had no use for the animal’s remains. So he has given it his girlfriend’s brother-in-law.

“It’s actually being made into a rug,” he said.

[Git-Up-Doc]

My girlfriend last week actually found some videos of it on Youtube. Its called “Banei Keiba” Theyre really nice horses but it looks pretty hard on them.

With these races they have basically a stoneboat behind them. they have to pull it up over two small hills spread over a distance of what seems like a 1/4 mile.

[Git-Up-Doc]

Here in Nova Scotia there was a case of a Tamworth sow killing a bobcat.

I can’t find the actual article but heres what I read.

The farm that raises these pigs allows them free access to pasture and a sort of nest box or something similar for the sows to have their piglets in. The pigs were a few weeks old and were running around the pasture. The bobcat was watching and made its move on the piglets, at which time they ran to safety to their box. The bobcat followed but once inside found itself in the crosshairs of an overprotective sow. Protecting her babies she flattened the bobcat.

Shows the maternal instinct of this breed and possibly all pigs allowed to have range.

I think one of the piglets died of an infection from being scratched or bitten by the bobcat and the sow had a bit of swelling on its face but still lives to raise another litter.

[Git-Up-Doc]

When my horse was home and not here with me where I am attending university he would be with my uncle’s young steers and heifers. He would get along well with them. He would have his days that he would want to be away from them but most days they were inseparable. When I would take him out of the pasture to take the wagon out the heifer he became buds with would run the fence-line looking for him trying to get out and se where he was.
On hot days the heifer would also stand with it’s head on Doc’s rump standing in the shade.

[Git-Up-Doc]

I will definitely pass that on next time I see them.

[Git-Up-Doc]

Hello. Nice to see Nova Scotia putting up a good show here. I am also from Nova Scotia and in fact from the South Shore.

I am very familiar with all of these men who you speak of. I grew up working on my grandfather’s farm and came to know these men very well as they are all close neighbors. A lot of them are starting to slow down but I know for a fact that each and every one of them still has as great a desire to pull oxen as when they first started.

I was speaking with Claude Silver not 2 months ago helping his grandson train a team of my uncle’s Charolais steers. As always, one steer was born to be an ox…..and the other a mule. I don’t think Claude has missed an ox pull in Lunenburg County for many a year.

Gordon is also still extremely active in pulling and does a lot of judging at the Big-Ex international ox-pull and many community pulls.

I don’t know Basil as well as the other men but I do know when the border closed to cattle and the international ox pull was cancelled here years ago his barn filled up pretty fast. He must have had two or more teams in each of the weight divisions plus numerous teams of steers he brought out the the Big-Ex to fill up stalls.

I myself have an old Belgian gelding named Doc. He has taught me everything I know about horses and is still every time I take him out teaching me. I have had him now for 7 or 8 years, he is my first horse.

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