[Nat(wasIxy)]

I can see that if fuel gets to a certain price, keeping as much the same and merely substituting the engines for animals would cut a bill for you. That’s practical? It might not go far enough for some of us…but we don’t own those farms so what the hey?

We use mobstocking, and that could (and has been) scaled up to thousands of cattle and sheep without getting any more ‘industrial’ than it is for our 60. If we had a thousand head of cattle, we would be a ‘big’ farm in the UK. We could easily use draft animals in that kind of a system to replace what little tractorwork we do.

‘Scale’ is a silly obsession I think, which is a neat distraction from other more pressing issue like HOW we are farming, however big or small the farm is. Like the notion we ‘need’ big farms to feed lots of people….it’s the same amount of land and the same things being grown, why does it all need to come from one organisation, why not many small ones? We won’t get any more or less food. That’s more of a business/logisticsy idea than a production issue.

[Nat(wasIxy)]

so you guys have all our water this year then? I’d appreciate it if you could send some back really…

[Nat(wasIxy)]

Simmentals here are definately a beef breed, some have experimented with dairy but it tends to be what we know as a ‘fleckvieh’ and imported for the purpose. Simmentals have gone down the beef road, known as a terminal sire and decent suckler cow.

The difference to that picture – here they are pied, and I’ve never even seen black pied let alone solid black, usually brown/red/fawn/lemon. The white face is a breed trait though, similar to hereford. They also seem taller here, a lot taller, and have a different head. If I saw the animal pictured here, I’d assume it was an Angus!

Confusingly, my Simmental is called Angus lol 😀

[Nat(wasIxy)]

I think that is the idea…

[Nat(wasIxy)]

Yes, and let us know how you get on!

[Nat(wasIxy)]

Good luck finding a home for him – I can’t help at all. I wanted to comment however that your simmentals are absolutely NOTHING like ours!

[Nat(wasIxy)]

@bivol 26870 wrote:

as for monks, there must have been great many monks (not to mention peasants!) working that land. you cant do that with a single family.

Who says it has to be a single family without employees? Employment in rural areas is surely desirable. A single family could now perhaps work thousands of acres alone thanks to huge machinery – but it has to be paid for, continually, a LOT, and is there any real reason the money for that couldn’t go on oxen and wages for people to work them?

[Nat(wasIxy)]

Yes the farm was owned by one distinct entity – the abbey. Many hands worked the land sure, but that is the same as the equivalent number of oxen or tractors or modernday employees.

It really doesn’t change how much one pair of oxen can do whether they are owned by the person working them, or one person/organisation owns many of them, therefore I still don’t see why the largest farms could not use them if they wanted to…yet still people repeat it?

[Nat(wasIxy)]

big farming has always been around – monks here were farming 6,000acres in 1130-1538 at Rievaulx abbey.

[Nat(wasIxy)]

That is really a separate issue though, not about whether oxen would ‘work’ on a large scale, but about whether one person *should* own 500 oxen….

Me? I dunno. We are a small ‘family farm’ but I don’t like to lay down rules about what other people should and shouldn’t be doing. If there aren’t enough families to take on farms to grow food for everyone, clearly we need bigger farms – perhaps they would rather work 9-5 as an ox teamster and go home and not think about it anymore? They kinda chose that in the industrial revolution. Some didn’t like it, like me, but most obviously did otherwise why aren’t we seeing mass, and I mean MASS, emigration to the countryside and the cities and towns being deserted? People like the idea of being a family farmer, but not the reality. Fair enough! I like the idea of having a better car maybe, better clothes…but not the reality of sitting behind a desk all day to get it!

[Nat(wasIxy)]

there’s no such thing as ‘oxen’ – they’re all individuals…my hereford is slow almost always, but the simmental and jersey barely stand still!

[Nat(wasIxy)]

@bivol 26850 wrote:

Ixy,
i suppose they mean that on bigger farms animals, especially, oxen, would simply be too slow to do the job on time. if you have 5 acres to plow, oxen are OK but if you have 50 acres to plow?

If you had 5acres to plow, you might use a little Fergie – the equivalent of a team of two oxen. If you had 5000, would you still use the little fergie? Or would you buy a Deere, or many more Fergies and drivers? So would you logically use the same two oxen, or would you use 500 oxen instead? 😉 And when you take into account the cost of buying, maintaining and fuelling the tractor I reckon teams of oxen would compare pretty well, given modern ploughs, training and harnessing.

[Nat(wasIxy)]

One question – why does everyone qualify these sorts of things with an ‘obviously this is only for small farms’…why? Very large estates used to be worked with draft animals…at what point does a farm become ‘large’? To my mind, big farms would simply need more oxen, just like they need more/larger tractors. If it succeeds on a small scale, without ‘economy of scale’ then it’s sure to work largescale too.

[Nat(wasIxy)]

I think dogs are a different proposition because they are so willing, and not liable to ‘spook’ – you take your lead from the animal, and if the dog loves what it’s doing, you carry on. I’m sure if the dog had ‘spooked’ at the haybale, nobody would have carried on with it 😀 IMO, dogs are the ultimate draft animals because of their flexibility, portability and genuine love of work!

I used to harness my GSD, tie the harness to my waist and then a dog headcollar to my hand and ride my bike this way – he pulled us along via my waist and I was astonished he could pull the amount he did, at such speed, and for so long! (I weighed three times what he did, but he could pull us at a gallop for 8 miles before slowing to a trot) He absolutely adored the exercise and I got around quickly, easily and cheaply! It was so good I’m dying to do it again, and do meat deliveries this way – got my eye on a rescue husky X GSD…

[Nat(wasIxy)]

Yes it made it over here – was quite gratifying for me after being told so many times that oxen are a thing of the past!

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