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Nat(wasIxy)
ParticipantI’ve emailed to ask if I can commission one with shafts and bars instead of towbar and spikes 🙂 Great idea John you little genius!!
ParticipantGood idea – wondering if I should just take the basic idea and get someone local to make one with shafts to get rid of the articulation and your suggestion aswell? He’s got a patent of some kind on the mechanism, but if I was just making it for myself it’d be OK right?
edited to add: not that I want to rob the guy of money, I think the idea is genius! but not quite right for me…
ParticipantI think I know what you mean! Yes I was wondering if there were tricks like that…thanks!
Participantjac would a twisted belt work? (I’ve just learnt about twisted belts!) lol…
ParticipantOurs is a ‘louis ranger’ from the ‘windy smithy’ – works really well, there’s space for 3 large pans on the top and a wee oven, I say ‘wee’ because it really is, it’s a struggle to find roasting tins and baking trays small enough and you can’t do big batches of stuff, but it serves the two of us fine and for the money (£450? incl. delivery) I think you’d struggle to do better!
ParticipantTrust me, speed is not an issue with Angus – the oxen of the past must have been a very different proposition!
Participantooo problem solved I think! http://www.carthorsemachinery.com/Carthorse_Machinery/Triple_System.html
must have item, and in the uk!!
ParticipantI only have pics in books – I’ve mostly focused on european collars and head/horn yokes, not a neck yoke fan. Sorry not to have replied sooner! Thanks for doing it for me ed!
ParticipantIs there a difference between the north american neck yokes and the traditional english yokes that were used?
ParticipantEase of milking surely comes down to the individual, we’ve had cows you can just set down next to with a stool and bucket and off you go, and I know people with goats that stand on their front legs to batter you in the face with their hinds!!
ParticipantAll our milking cows are ‘culls’ from our local jersey herd – they adapt to hand milking like ducks to water. Our current one is a little bit grumpy, but nothing to worry about. They’re fine being haltered and tied too, which surprised me.
We specifically pick cows which look in good nick – there are a few that get culled for no other reason than they just don’t yield enough to justify their place but other than that are fine; they would be, as they aren’t yielding too much!
We bought one car crash of a cow with a dodgy leg who was a high yielder, out of pity and because all those litres were tempting….. She did well for a few months as we switched to once-a-day milking and pampered her but she died at 6 whereas the 9yr old who yields less is still going strong, seems to have taken to AI first time too, as she did last year 😉 we love Bella…
ParticipantI’d think he’d be the *only* person in the uk who knows – covet him, we might need him 😉 Although I’ve managed fine without shoes so far as we rarely work on a hard surface.
Yes, snow up to our knees and ferrying buckets all day – it always catches us out!
ParticipantThe best dairy animal by far for us so far has been a jersey cow. We feed only silage and a couple of scoops of our home grown and milled pig meal to keep her occupied during milking, and we milk once a day or if she has a calf, only when needed. We pick strong bodied, low yielding culls and get them cheap from our local largescale jersey dairy.
The great thing about a cow is that she gives so much milk in one go, a dwarf goat will give you enough, but you have to milk little and often to get it. We can milk just once a week and get enough to drink, some cream, a week’s worth of butter and make some soft cheese! As long as the calf is there to mop up the rest it doesn’t take over your life.
We have also milked our dexters but the milk just doesn’t compare to a jersey’s. It’s average for butterfat at best, and naturally homogenised which makes getting the cream and making butter difficult and quite wasteful. Jersey fat globules are plentiful, and big so they float – you just scoop off the cream with a spoon, easy peasy, and get full fat milk left to drink/for cheese aswell! I think if you are only producing drinking milk, it’s a lot of effort and resources but if you are making cream, butter, yoghurt and cheese it’s much more rewarding all round.
Have you considered a sheep? The milk is divine, they are just as thrifty as a goat but no goaty taste to the milk (and therefore butter) at all. The milk is very seasonal, but it freezes so well so you could intensively milk a whole flock for three months or so and stock up for the rest of the year. Our sheep aren’t a milky breed but can manage 1litre a day if carefully managed.
ParticipantEd: I have a 3pad harness that anne witalfsky sent to me; find it very good indeed. It’s currently broken (old leather, it’s an antique) but a guy in newcastle is fixing it for me. I could ask if he could take what measurements he needs and he could make you a couple of replicas? It only fits a BIG animal though, Ang is enormous but it’s tightened as much as it goes on him as it is, yours may need to grow into it.
Participant@jac 22381 wrote:
Australia would never have been opened up without oxen… The drovers were called “bullockies”…
JohnI’m not sure it couldn’t have been done without them, as camels dealt with the heat and lack of water a heck of a lot better than horses or oxen, and are stronger, but it doesn’t change the fact that oxen DID play a big part!
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