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Kevin Cunningham
ParticipantI made a 4 inch yoke with PVC bows easily the first time, mine are HolstienXJersey. A simple fir or pine 4×4 is light enough that they just get used to walking together, but don’t have to carry any real weight. I spent a lot of time in halters getting them used to walking side by side before introducing the yoke, and was suprised at how easily they took to it. Have fun with the calves and get ready to spend tons of time with them.
ParticipantI really like the simplicity of the the design. It makes a lot of sense to use new parts and innovative technologies so that we can best utilize draft in the 21st century. I live about 10 miles from the ocean and in a rainforest which means that rust has gotten anything that might have been of use from the horsedrawn era. I could go and find implements and spend tons of time to restore them, but I would rather be farming. I find it very interesting to live on the edge of old and new. I love the old timey feel of farming the way we do but I find it not very progressive (not political) to be anachronistic. So yes I would like to see some more pictures and I might try to copy your design. How wide of a swath does the six discs cut? and how did you determine the angle to set them at? My tractor disc has similarly sized discs but set tandem. I love it for cutting up cover crop and breaking sod in the spring. I will have to get used to a slower pace as I transition to draft, but I won’t miss the fumes.
ParticipantI was trained on a tractor powered vegetable farm and subsoiling was a part of our rotation. We also grow most of the crops dryland, with out irrigation. Using the ripper in the fall on tilled and slightly compacted soil has an amazing effect on water penetration and retention. It is also a wild ride on a tractor because if you hit something you can “pop a wheely” with the tractor or worse flip it over backwards. It is awesome to sink the shank to 2 feet and watch the ground fracture underneath the wheels of the tractor. Think about the movie Tremors, how the ground cracks and rolls, to a lesser extent, but definatelty seeing the effect beyond the wheels of the tractor. I think the practice is great when you use a tractor inevitably cause some compaction, but I have a hard time seeing draft animals pull that. I am sure they can do it to lesser extant but I think that preventing compaction and using deep rooted plants in rotation will have a much better result in the long term.
ParticipantAndy,
I am curious about how you built this disc. It actually looks quite simple although I can’t see the axle set up. Why did you opt to build a new disc rather that renovate an old one? Is your goal to use this as primary tillage to replace a plow, since it seems larger than most small discs I’ve seen? I might want to make something similar once my boys are big enough to pull it as I can assume it is a hard pull.ParticipantWow, this discussion has been more valuable to me than anything I have ever read on draft and has made me think about how I train my animals in a very deep way. I printed it out and put it in my oxen folder. Super valuable advice and thoughts. Thank you all.
ParticipantI am not hurt at what you have said as it is the truth, and I know that the truth is often very hard to hear. It is these animals and these people that act as my mirror. I have really liked what you said in these posts and the previous ones with Andy because it really has made clear to me that the “team” is three not two, and I myself am a part of the training. This is something that I very much want and need in my life but like all the good learning experiences and the good teachers, they can be hard at first but looking back these are the things that I will remember and really make a part of my life. I could go about my life and never look at these parts of who I am and how I got to this place, but I think that my life will be better and rich for facing some of these demons. When instinct comes to the surface then we know that we have hit a really deep spot and this is were real change comes from.
ParticipantI’m not going to scrap the whole project and that was never my intention. They are too young to even make good beef anyway. I might be a bit hotheaded and I do worry about that when working with the animals, but they are a good reason for me to get a better control over my anger. After all I can throw wrenches at a tractor all day long and only hurt myself, but with animals I have to keep my cool. I know that anger is not a good trait for a teamster, but I have many of the other qualities that I think make a good teamster. And I do have the persistence and patience to work through these problems. And most of this problem is my inexperience. I have never raised a calf let alone oxen. I have raised lots of other animals though and that give me some idea, but honestly maybe I am not familiar with the development stages of bovines.
My steers are young but since I work them everyday, twice a day, they are learning and developing quite quickly. I have no idea how they compare to other animals since I have absolutely no frame of reference, but I can generally assume that I am putting it as much or more time than a well trained 4H pair. I am also amazed at how much they can do at this stage, and we already rely on them for work on the farm. When they were down because of Joe’s shoulder injury I realized how much labor they are already saving us. So most of the fault is my own because I am already treating them like a trained pair, not quite, but a little bit. I am going to reevaluate my expectations and adjust from there.
And I am getting better at controlling my anger when they run. The second time they ran I found it impossible to control, and I lost it, but this time I not beat them. I still was pissed but I did not take it out on them. And I did go back to work. After all they had to pick up all the rocks that were scattered on the field, I just added some more weight so they couldn’t run again. It is going to be hard to control my instinct to run, though. When they have taken off, I don’t even think about it, I just start running too. It triggers something deep inside of me that will be very hard to control. Hopefully I won’t ever have to have that experince again.
ParticipantI agree that the runaway thread is excellent, I have read it several times now. Vicki, my steers are HolsteinXJersey, is it the jersey that would make them more active?
ParticipantWell, I am not giving up on them yet. Tonight went well but I was watching them like a hawk. I think that all this can be explained by my high expectations of them. In all honestly I think they are progressing quite rapidly because I am able to work them so much. This causes me to expect too much for were they are in their development. It is also due in part to my ignorance of what their levels of development are, because this is my first time raising calves let alone oxen. I will keep working with Joe who is the more skittish, I also think that he will always be skittish and I have to live with that. I will never trust him again. He can also be the most affectionate and the most precocious. I also might start another pair soon because of many reasons, but I won’t give up on this team yet.
ParticipantI guess it is helpful to know that others have had multiple runaways as well. I know they are young and being my first team I am just finding out how fast or slow they should progress. And after the first two runaways I read though that post on the forum and that helped me enough that I did not post about it then. I guess this time was so much more dramatic and serious that it does make me consider that maybe this team might not work out. Does this happen? If a teamster does their best to train an animal and puts in the time and energy needed is it possible that you just might not have a suitable animal and it is best to cull them? I am not going to make that decision now and I certainly am not giving up yet, but I wonder if anybody had just found a problem too deep to work out.
I does make sense to not frame the problem as one of trust because I agree that you can’t ever fully trust the animal. I guess it is simply my expectations and lack of experience that cause me to push the envelope of how much they can handle. This has been the only major stumbling block along the way. Sure there have been minor problems but nothing that seems as insurmountable as this tendency to bolt.
We need to get a few more calves this year anyway to use our goat milk and get a supply of beef going for the CSA. So I might try my hand a couple more just to see if there is a difference. When I started out with the two I have now I had no expectations, because it was all just an experiment, and they could always be well behaved beef. Many, many hours into the experiement I must have developed some expectations, and maybe some that were a bit too high.
Participant@Countymouse 33917 wrote:
Still need to practice sidestepping on “gee” a lot. My off ox is a bad sidestepper moving out. I tend to not do this much because doing fieldwork with “gee” commands makes me walk in the tilled soil. Whaa! 😮
This is probably why haw seems to be a more common and an easier turn. I wonder how this translates into the tractor era because most tractors also turn more to the left because of off set discs. I have gotten on the seat of some tractors that have some brake side completely worn down. It is not always the left side though.
I have trouble with the gee turn on my steers so I am always looking for time to turn that way for practice. I also have noticed some improvement since working both singly in the halter. It used to be such that my off steer would step over the chain on a turn, and not even that sharp of a turn. Now he doesn’t do that but he will still rub a bit more than the nigh steer. I think I am going to work on this a lot more now I know how much of an issue it can be later.
Participantokay, okay so I did it I joined the DAP facebook page. I guess I just don’t want to miss anything!
ParticipantThis is interesting. I never even thought to try and not have them touch the chain at all. Of course I try and not make them turn too tightly, but I found that they rub the chain a little bit all the time. Now my boys are still young and not pulling tons so I wonder if I need to work on this with them now. I have never had the chain draw blood, yet, but if they get in the habit now maybe it will get worse when they are older. For me it is the off ox that contacts the chain more often on a gee turns. The nigh one stays pretty much out of the way on a haw turn. I can see this being a difficult habit to break once they are larger and set in their ways. I do like the pipe on the chain idea as it would have some slip as opposed to the fire hose that would still rub, but not pinch.
Participant@Countymouse 33834 wrote:
Ha, funny how much a firehose can look like a strap with a ring on the end! I had to double check…
When I first saw that picture I thought it was some sort of tow strap as well. I thought maybe it was to put a little give in the pull, but then that doesn’t really make sense with oxen. With the new scar on Joe my team will only be showing in the misfit class, so I don’t think I have to worry about the rub either.
Participant@oxspan 33837 wrote:
If he was a coon dog, a scar would make him worth more.
He just might end up with a been there done that, bad ass, kinda scar. It is on his outside shoulder so he can show it off in the yoke.
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