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Kevin Cunningham
ParticipantAndrew, those are all the great questions that I am running through right now. I am going to be curious to see how your enterprise takes shape. How much ground do you have at your new place? I am just trying to get a sense of how much is possible with our available pasture. I am not sure about keeping a bull yet. I live in dairy country so finding a good AI tech is not very hard but monitering for heat would be very important. I also would also probably buy younger animals because of cost and I would prefer to have horned animal s and I am finding that can be hard to find when looking at mature animals. There are many considerations and I hope to have the time to sort out the needed infrastructure and have a plan before commiting to anything. I have raised dairy goats without any distinct plan for the last five years and learned a lot but also made some mistakes. When I step it up to cattle I would like to do it better this time around.
ParticipantI know I probably won’t be breaking another pair right away since I am still cutting my teeth on this first pair. So luckily I don’t have to worry about what breed my next team will be as of yet, but we do have enough ground to raise some breeding stock. Now we probably don’t have enough ground to base our whole business on beef or dairy. So I am thinking that if I am going to economically raise some cattle, they need to be some sort of specialty type. That is what is exciting about raising oxen for me because they can add another level of usefulness to the farm and allow me to raise some cattle. We have about 45 acres of farm ground plus about 40 of river and riparian area. Of that 45 we till about 10 each year. So the remainder is in pasture. Not enough pasture to run a full on grass fe beef operation but more than we can afford to just have a hobby animal or two. In my mind we are in a good position for the “triple purpose” type animal, or at least a dual purpose meat and draft animal. I really enjoy raising animals, meaning breeding, so I am considering trying to eventually get several cows. I am quite intrigued by the milking devon becuase of the history and honestly I think they are quite beautiful. That would obviously be the hardest for me to get plus the longest distance. I am not sure 3000 plus miles is my limit. The milking shorthorn is another option and there is a dairy here in CA with them but even that would be 6-8 hour drive away from here, plus I am not sure if I want to have true milk type animals. We are getting rid of our milking goat herd this year and I am hesitant to start milking right away, but maybe. The closest option might be horned herefords, I occasionally see one in the pastures around here, or more often what I see is a poorly dehorned cow within all the other polled herefords. I guess we will see, I’m not quite ready to go out and buy some breeding stock so I have some time to think on it still.
ParticipantCongratulations Andy! she is beautiful, and healthy. We are also expecting our first child this December so I will be joining you in fatherhood soon. Let me know how it is!
ParticipantAfter rotating our mixed herd through grass all season long (twice a day moves!) we are finaly starting to dry out. This time of year if I don’t irrigate everything is dusty dry. I am trying something new this year. I am now keeping the herd stationary in a sacrifice area and feeding out my hay. I hope to collect some of the manure as it is a small paddock and let my pastures fully recover. If I irrigate now I will hopefully get a jump on our short fall grass flush before winter and then stockpile pasture for winter grazing. I am very new to grazing so I guess I will see if this works. My steers seem to be maintaining condition. They are not gaining but not losing either. They are in a seperate sacrifice zone and are getting the premium hay because I still try to yoke them regulary and burning more calories. But honestly the steers that don’t work still seem to be gaining just a bit on the grass hay.
ParticipantSo it took me thirty minutes of so to bang together a simple drage out of scrap. It seems like a great little project. Here is the finished product.
I built it light because my steers are only a year old so I didn’t want to start with something heavy. I used an old threshing plate from my combine which has slots for bolts that way I could adjust the bite of the leading egde. The steers were curious about this new noisy device I about to hitch them to.
Unfortuntately the wood was a bit weak and the metal blade broke off within the first few feet. But it gave me a chance to experiment with a new tool and it gave my steers something new to pull. We pulled it down the driveway anyway just to get them used to the sound.
I also did some more research and I really like the design of the martin ditcher. I watched some videos that Tillers has on their website, look for older versions of the Nigh Ox their newsletter, of road building in South America and Africa. The ditcher has the bite to really move some dirt. I wonder if there are any plane out there for that piece.
ParticipantIt looks like all the designs only have a steel plate along the first third of so of the leading edge. This makes sense as you want that part to dig into the ditch and then move material up to smooth the crown. One of the links even said to drop the plate below the wood edge to get more digging action. What I like about the design is that it is something that can be knocked together “quick and dirty” and when the thing falls apart make a new one. I’ll probably make mine out of fir or redwood because that is what I got on hand. I also like the ability of the chain attachment because that is how you change the angle of attack. I can’t resist I’m going to go bang one out and see what happens.
ParticipantI remember that Tillers has a picture of an implement on their website of a “Martin Ditcher” that is being used for road maintenance. There is just one photo of the piece but it looks pretty simple of welded srcap metal. This could be a cheap way to maintain the roads. I have been needing to grade my driveway for a while I might have to make a simple road drag this winter.
ParticipantI always wonder about shows and pulls. I have no access to any of the fairs out east and can only compare to what I see at our local 4H shows at the county fair here. I can imagine based upon what I generally see in this country, what the attitude of some people might be like. Some people like to be in the spotlight but most people don’t always want to do the hard work. After all the new American dream is to get rich quick and never work a day in your life, right? What is lacking is the understanding by the general public about how much time goes into the few moment in the ring. I can certainly say that this year when I “showed” my steers for the first time to a group of second graders (a very discriminating crowd), I knew how many hours of work it took for them to stand and move on command flawlessly, but my two minute performance probably was not completely understood because it took so many hours of daily work to get them to that stage.
On the other hand I think a lot of people can see the difference. I have had quite of few people comment on the behaviour of my steers because what they are used to seeing are the few beef steers shown at the fair each year, and those animal are just barely able to be contained by the young handlers. Who knows maybe I might even try and start a working steer 4H group here in CA. We don’t have the tradition of draft the that the NE might have but heck maybe we could pull y’all around the ring.
ParticipantFor me the quality of this forum shines through the cumbersome media of the Internet. I am no expert in web forums but the few I have been on (but I have never joined any except this one) have not had the level of discussion, sharing and intimacy that I see here. I quickly tire of antique tractor or truck forums, and even other livestock based forums (Facebook being a completely different beast). It is important to remember that the strength of this “place” is the people. In the almost year since I started ease dropping in on these converstions I have become a devoted adherent to this forum and talk about it with everybody else who is actually around me, and that is the best thing I can do to promote the exchange of information regarding draft animals. I feel that we (the people) are the way that we can best interact with the general public and promote our craft.
I too am really interested in what about pulling oxen competitions are doing for the overall world of oxen driving. I am very seperated from the North East draft world, and therefore ignorant to the culture of draft animals of all types in what is certainly a main hub of draft based activity in the US. Droverone what is your opinion about competitive oxen pulling and what is it doing to oxen driving as a whole?
ParticipantFor me Facebook seems to be a necessary evil. Our farm has directly benefited from the free advertising and marketing oppurtunities it allows, but I would rather not have it at all honestly. DAP net, however remains a place to get real information, mentorship and comraderie concerning draft animals. And I agree with Tim, sometimes I want to ditch the new fangled technology all together, but unfortunately I still need to learn more from my virtual neighbors since none of my actual neighbors farm, or farm with draft.
ParticipantI like to think that heaven has a flock of sheep up in the clouds for the pyrs who pass, to guard. Pyrs are special dogs and are always missed. I’m sorry to hear about the loss of a good friend.
ParticipantSo Andy, let’s hear your opinion on why the gothic arch style bow is better than a simple curve bow. I have seen bows like this pictured in various places and I can envision why it might have some benefit but I am wondering what your opinion is. Have you used bows like this?
ParticipantI like your hard ware innovations. I am really curious to see how the multiple attachment point rotates the yoke. This is something I have been wanting out of my most recent yoke. I have a basic dropped ring and I feel that when I am using a chain which is most of the time the yoke doesn’t tilt enough for the steers to really push against the flat of the yoke it still rides the rounded corner of the ellipse. This might be part of why my off steer has had the tendency to give up when pulling heavier loads. How did you bend your metal bows?. I want to do steel bows next time as well, since I lack the right woods and ability to bend wooden bows.
ParticipantNice yoke Andy. What is nice about raising the calves is the chance to make a progression of yokes. I am only three yokes in and my skill at making them is already a lot better. They are rounder and more shapely, and smoother in the neck seat. I can see this being more and more important as they pull more and more. I am jealous over the all the hard woods y’all have. I am still using fir, but recently I had a chance to see a couple of “barn hangers” around here and they also seem to be made of fir. I guess you have to work with what you have. An old timer suggested yew, we do have them, they are rare, but apparently tough as nails.
ParticipantI do agree that planting a variety of crops will yield better results rather than focusing on only one crop at a time. This is why we plant not only up to ten grains a year, but also vegetables, chickens, lamb, beef, pork, and just about anything else that seems crazy enough to try. Our farm is very diversified, but I have seen that being too spread out can mean you do many things poorly rather than a few things well. I also consider that I only 30 -35 times to try my hand at growing crops. Each year I make a big mistake and have a crop failure is another year I have to wait to get another chance. Because we are talking about time on an annular scale I am not always willing to take risks, because I litteraly can’t afford to have even a 25% learning curve. I am all for experimentation but on our farm it is balanced with respect for what has worked for many, many seasons. We don’t farm in a bubble. Look around at your neighbors what works for them, what was done historically in your area. I don’t think it is good it get locked into “the way it has always been done,” but I have already made enough mistakes, like grain fields that yield 500#/ac, to have come back to some common sense ways of farming.
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