[OldKat]

@J-L 12678 wrote:

Robert I must watch at different times than you. I sure lot’s of cowboys biting the dust in bull riding everywhere.
I do have to agree that it’s taken away from Rodeo somewhat. To me the ultimate is still the NFR. Saddlebronc is my favorite event and then calf roping. Both of which I used to do.
Rodeo itself has changed somewhat around here too. We used to have 3 or 4 local rodeos that were full of local people and some folks that’d travel around to some shows. The stock was from around here too. It was a fun contest where you felt like you could actually compete and win whatever event you’re in.
Now we have associations putting on rodeos with people who travel with them and know the stock. Many of them do nothing but rodeo on their folks money and are at a level that is hard for the average working cowboy to compete at. Not as fun and the people are not as fun.
Robert I hear you on a draft animal event, but unfortunately it wouldn’t be a big bang with anyone but us! I tried to incorporate a chore team race into the county fair and one of the ranch rodeos but can’t get anyone to drag their teams to town around here.

Bingo. Same thing has happened here. Go out back where the trailers are parked at a local county fair rodeo around here (most are PRCA shows) and you will see $50,000 to 60,000 trailers pulled by pickups that easily cost the same or more. Throw in a couple of high dollar “running” Quarter horses at $10,000 to 15,000 a pop, tack, etc. You are looking at well over $100,000 just to go down the road not counting, fuel, food or feed. Of course the rough stock guys get out cheaper by not hauling, but it is still very expensive to rodeo. I find it hard to believe that people that are riding or roping in slack at 1:00 or 2:00 AM on a week night are up going to work the next day. I guess it helps to have a momma or daddy that has pockets deep enough to make this thing work. More power to ’em.

Before I went on a growth spurt at about age 15 or so, I use to try my hand at bull riding. Never was any good at it though. I tried bareback horses; and was “okay”, not good. Saddle broncs always scared me. Of course, we never saw the big northern cross bred horses down here; most saddle broncs were no bigger than the bareback horses and were WAY quicker than I wanted to be snubbed up to. It was FUN though, I’ll give you that.

[OldKat]

I’ve had such a problem following this that I am lost for a response, and y’all know me … I AM NEVER LOST FOR WORDS!

I think I have a headache ….

[OldKat]

This is a really good thread; some serious thoughts. When I think about what I would do if I had it to do over; I think I would do EXACTLY what Ixy is doing … I would have adopted the “just go for it” attitude. Sometimes I think we analyze business opportunities too much. I think many times the successful entrepreneur just finds something they have a passion for and charges ahead with their dream. They literally don’t know what they don’t know. They haven’t figured out that they can’t do it, so they go ahead and do it … if you follow what I am trying to say.

I don’t say this lightly as I am the guy that quit the best job I ever had at age 39 to pursue a business opportunity that fell flat on its face; taking almost our entire lives savings down the drain with it. So you have to be realistic to some degree.

However, trying to wait until everything is perfect and it all works out in order to transition from your current reality to the desired reality sometimes yields a harvest of bitter fruit. That is what I am dealing with right now.

Still, opportunities to rebound come in the most unexpected fashions and one of those unexpected opportunities is starting to shape up for me. It will probably mean relocating to another part of the country, but if it means that we can achieve our dreams we are more than willing to make that change.

I hope all of this rambling isn’t too confusing. Maybe I should have just said this instead; 1) decide what you want 2) figure out what can go wrong and make sure that it doesn’t (go wrong) 3) go for it & finally, 4) keep at it

Good luck to all with their dreams …

[OldKat]

@Bumpus 12025 wrote:

Ixy … I believe you may have posted on the wrong thread .

This thread is not about oil … it is about Sustainable Farming, Forestry.
.

No, I think she is on the right thread. I think her point being that ‘conventional agriculture’, forestry, etc runs on oil. Therefore, in the view that oil will be exhausted at some point, ‘Sustainable’ enterprises would depend on the ability to produce, process, harvest, etc absent fossil fuels.

At least that is my understanding of the concept.

[OldKat]

@Bumpus 11977 wrote:

The reason of them being wild is mostly because in the U.S.A. the hump
and long eared cattle are turned loose on large tracts of land
and people do not fool with them.

People who raise and use them over seas including children,
have no real trouble with them because they tend there cattle often.
Even young children can control and work them in the fields.

It’s not the cattle themselves, it’s the ones that people turn loose and never
fool with that are wild.

Mostly in Florida all the way to California in the lower states
where it gets hot.
.

That is true Bumpus; there is a vast difference between the TLC that oxen get compared to southern range cattle. Still, the closest thing that I have seen to the handling that oxen get is show cattle. These are pampered, groomed, washed, and handled beauty queens (and kings). In all the years I was around the show ring the ONLY animals that I ever saw melt down and go on a wild eyed, snot slingin’ tear had a hump on their back. Of course there are all sorts of bos Indicus breeds around the world, and the breed we know as the American Brahman is actually a composite of 3 Indian breeds, so there could still be differences in temperament within the various breeds.

A breed that intrigues me from a temperament perspective, conformation and heat tolerance perspectives too is the Afrikaner. They are a Sanga breed meaning they are a hybrid between the Zebu cattle of the east and the native taurine cattle of Africa. The interesting thing is once DNA testing started some researchers in South Africa attempted to determine the genetic makeup of this breed and they found that the indicine alleles are almost entirely present only in the XX chromosomes. This would indicate that the foundation animals were not randomly bred as previously believed, but specifically mated; indicine females with taurine males …with few exceptions. Some how they were also able to determine that the breeding of the foundation animals was stabilized by about 950 to 1,000 years ago. Some animal scientists have thus classified this breed as bos Taurus Afrikanis rather than bos Indicus as previously classified. This has not been universally accepted.

The funniest thing is that Dr. Bonsma had stated, for various reasons, some 40 or 50 years ago that the only way you should develop a taurine-indicine cross would be to use bos Taurus males on bos Indicus females. It is ironic that the ancient breeders of these animals came to the same conclusion.

[OldKat]

@Ixy 11967 wrote:

I don’t think for one minute anyone would farm them here, but we’d certainly have afew as pasture pets/oddities though! We don’t get regular really hot weather (only sometimes) but equally it doesn’t get super cold either. Well, we think it’s cold but it isn’t really, on a global scale. It’d be no problem to house them in cold weather – most of our cattle come in over winter anyway. We are quite unusual in that we only house from january-march. Most people house november-april

House? 😉 No ma’am! Most eared cattle don’t have the temperament to be kept in a barn. I guess if you just had just a few and you raised them real gentle like from small calves they MIGHT be calm enough to come inside. Most won’t even take to being corralled unless you have one heck of a corral; steel pipe, heavy cable wires, etc. They are generally more like wild animals than they are like domesticated cattle, at least when being handled. Usually they can be somewhat calm while out in the pasture, with no one fooling with them. Start bringing them in however and the rodeo is on.

Of course I am not talking about oxen, which I know you are into, but rather commercial cattle. Since I don’t know anyone that has ever raised one for an ox I couldn’t say how well they would take to it. I guess it can be done, because bivol has posted videos of people using them so. Interestingly though the straight bred cattle seem to be more docile than the ones that are crossed with bos Taurus cattle; they can be TOTAL idiots when you start trying to work them.

[OldKat]

bivol, is the guy in the last post plowing in rice stubble? That is what it looks like. Also, that is a really interesting looking animal he has. I wonder what the breeding is?

Not sure if I mentioned this before or not, but when I was in graduate school our university had a contract to train Peace Corp workers for service in Swaziland. They had to make ox bows out of pipe in the ag. mech. shop. They then train oxen to plow and they would practice plowing out by the horticulture department greenhouses.

I wasn’t involved in the contract, but a guy I officed with was. At the time I didn’t have much interest in what they were doing, so I didn’t pay much attention to how they did things. I wish now I had been more curious about their activities.

[OldKat]

@john plowden 11945 wrote:

A choker is the chain and hook you wrap around a log – used with a grab hook on your evener or arch or whiffle tree etc.to pull said log –
John

Thanks. One more question; do all of them have a grab hook on the log end, or do some use a sort of sliding ring to cinch the log(s) up? I saw a chain one time with a hook on one end and a ring on the other. It was about 4 or 5 foot long and was in the back of a pulp wooders truck, so I was curious if that is what he could have been using as a choker. The guy was not real friendly, so I didn’t ask how it was used. However, I have always wondered about it. Not enough to ever actually ask anybody mind you, but still I wondered.

[OldKat]

@Scott G 11892 wrote:

Congrats John!

You’re hooked for good now. Great looking mare!

The only major thing I noticed right off the bat other than a happy man and a happy horse is exactly what Jason said, shorten up.

The closer you set your choker to the single tree the better line of draft and lift you’re going to get. You also gain a lot more control of the log when you’re maneuvering around stuff. I also shorten up the traces on the return to the landing to get a little more lift yet.

Have fun, be safe, and fill up the landing 🙂

Okay, so maybe this is a major “duh” question here; but what exactly is this “choker” you logging guys talk about?

Also, does anyone know of source of definitions for basic logging terms? I am just curious about some of the stuff you all talk about, but he lingo goes right over my head. Kind of hard to follow that way.

[OldKat]

@Bumpus 11915 wrote:

.
I know cattle like Brahmans, Zebus, and some others with large humps on there shoulders, and short hair on there bodies grow quite tall in size, and can withstand a lot of hotter weather than most other cattle can, and have a strong resistance disease.

They are used in many countries as oxen ( A Beast Of Burden )

I was wondering if anyone used them on logging jobs now a days.
.

Bumpus,

You would think that if anyone was using Bos Indicus based cattle to log it would be in the states that border the Gulf of Mexico, or in the Southeast … Carolinas etc. I personally know of very little animal powered logging in Texas, but I understand that it is fairly common in the more northern areas of East Texas for people to use horses, primarily Belgians. I have never seen it with my own eyes though. It would make sense that it would be in that area of the state; as it is more of mixed hardwood and pine area than is Southeast Texas, which is mostly pure yellow pine.

I did have a guy tell me that a few years ago he was in Northern Louisiana, I think up between Alexandria and Monroe, and was driving down the road one Sunday morning when he came upon a guy with about 10 oxen pulling a massive log down the shoulder of the road. He said they appeared to be either straight bred Brahman or F-1’s. He said he didn’t stop and talk to the guy, so I don’t know if the fellow actually works in the woods for a living or if he was just giving his animals something to pull.

[OldKat]

@Ixy 11911 wrote:

No I’ve never even met one – the only Bos Indicus we seem to have in the UK are the mini ones, which are verrrry expensive – and we’re not allowed to import semen or embryos either!

I think it’d certainly be handy to have te hump there, although might make you lazy about fitting which would hurt the animal perhaps – you could just stick anything in front of the hump and it would pull OK. It’s probably nice to ride behind the hump too.

However, I’m quite happy with my B. Taurus boys 😉

I’m not sure why anyone in the UK would even want Bos Indicus cattle. You do not have much in the way of really hot weather, do you? That is where the indicene animals really shine, but they do suffer when moved into temperate climates that are on the colder side.

Hard to find, but if you can get your hands on Man Must Measure by the late Dr. Jan Bonsma (and read it about 10 times) you will gain a fascinating insight into the issue of adaptability of an animal to it’s environment. That is not the title of the book as it was originally published in South Africa, but that is what it was titled for publication in the US. Unfortunately, it is out of print and difficult to find. Worth every penny of it’s cost though.

[OldKat]

@Bumpus 11842 wrote:

.
There are many different groups who want to control every aspect of your life to there way of thinking on how you should live, breath, eat, and make a living today, and in the future, etc.

I remember back some years ago that what is restricted today was unbelievable and laughed at back 50 years ago.

Stop tree cutting because of an Owl with spots on it.
Stop Whale killing for people who have eaten them for centuries.
Stop horse slaughter, and restrict consumption, and prevent burial after there death.
Stop land timber cutting because of minnows in the creek.

Many want all cattle to be raised on nothing but grass
and do away with all feed lot operations.

There is not enough grass on the planet earth to raise half of the livestock to meet the demand for beef meat.

And the list goes on and on just naming a few things.

It won’t be long and there ( may already be ) people who are working to make you take that harness of that horse, mule, oxen etc. because to them it is not natural and it is cruel to make them work.

They will work to make you put them back into the wild
so they can be free spirited, and beautiful to watch for others.

Don’t laugh … just watch … it’s coming.

Many people laughed 50 – 70 years ago at those ideas
but those same people are crying today.

Who knows what it might be next …

SAVE THE ENDANGERED COCK ROACHS AND TERMITES 😮
.

There are many different groups who want to control every aspect of your life to there way of thinking on how you should live, breath, eat, and make a living today, and in the future, etc.

I agree and disagree with you Bumpus. In fact, I think that is what much of the health care hub-bub is really all about. Many of the partisans on either side of the aisle could give a crap about who has health care and what kind of health care they get. What they are really after is CONTROL. They want CONTROL over as many aspects of your life as possible; therefore you will do what you are told, when you are told it. Kind of a cliché, but still true … dictators prefer an ignorant, unarmed population. It also helps if that ignorant, unarmed population has no economic opportunity for self determination. Then they line up like chickens at the feed pan and submit to whatever it takes to get a smidgen of scratch.

In today’s news is the story that the FCC wants to “regulate” the internet. Say it ain’t so, Al Gore! I think the internet works just fine without another government agency sticking their face in it. Where do these people get off?

Many want all cattle to be raised on nothing but grass
and do away with all feed lot operations.

There is not enough grass on the planet earth to raise half of the livestock to meet the demand for beef meat.

I disagree with you about grass finished beef, for several reasons;
1) There was virtually no feedlot industry before the end of WWII. It developed when and where it did not because it was a better alternative to grass finishing, but because it is cheaper and easier to ship the finished product, beef, pork, mutton etc than it is to ship grain. It is however a FASTER way to reach finish weight than finishing on grass, so the time value of money factor does tip the scales toward the feedlot boys.

2) The statement that there isn’t enough grass in the world to finish beef on is invalid, because outside of the U.S. and Canada most countries in the world continue to grass finish beef. There is some feedlot type production starting in South America, but on a very small scale. Same is true in some other countries, but because grain is more valuable for other purposes than for feeding to slaughter animals it is not going to change any time soon. Not that there is NO feeding going on, but it is rather limited compared to what we do here. Also, if you look at the premier grass finishing area in the world … the Argentine Pampas …and compare it the overall land mass of that country & then compare it to the land mass of the USA on a percentage basis you will see that it is an area roughly the size of from Oklahoma City over to the Arkansas / Oklahoma state line wide and from about the middle of Oklahoma up to the middle of Kansas high. It so happens that the eastern Oklahoma & Kansas area mentioned WAS at the heart of the grass finishing business when it was in vogue. While that is a big geographic area, there are massive areas outside of the above mentioned region where finishing can and does occur. Much of the west coast has climate and grass that are VERY conducive to grass finishing, same with Appalachia, New England and in the winter and spring (using ryegrass and/or wheat & oats) the entire Gulf Coast from the Middle Texas Coast clear around to Florida and a couple of hundred miles inland. In fact this was the last area where grass finished beef was routinely produced, right up to about 30 or 35 years ago.

3) Next, while there may be some environmental activists that favor grass finishing to grain finishing that is not what is driving this growing market. The idea of being able to LOCALLY produce beef has a lot of appeal to some producers and to many consumers. Hard to do in areas where grain is not grown on a large scale, unless you finish ’em on grass. Also, the grass finished beef stores longer, stays fresher and has higher concentrations of Omega 3’s, and lower Omega 6’s than does grain finished beef. i.e. a better ratio. It is darker in color than grain finished beef and it does have a different flavor. It does not usually leave the greasy taste in your mouth that grain feed beef does.

Ever heard the statement that our beef us the envy of the world? Don’t believe it. Most foreigners think our beef is bland and lacking texture. They DO NOT line up to buy our exported beef.

4) Finally, most producers of grass finished beef hope the feedlots NEVER go away. Why? Because right now they can command a PREMIUM for their product compared to grain fed beef. If grass finished became the norm, bye-bye premium.

[OldKat]

@Vand 11528 wrote:

Old Kat,
There could possibly be an issue with the tugs rubbing/irritating your horse or harness fit or something else like that; but some of what you’re describing sounds like your Maggie-horse is just feeling good and likes to go. One of our mares is like that. Once she knows it’s time to work, she does this gorgeous charger prance (pretty to look at, not pretty to drive when you’re fingers are going numb). She’s done it since she was a baby and her momma did it too. There’s a few things we did to change the situation. When I’m taking her plowing, I don’t want her dragging me around all day, so I take her out the day before, hook her to a sled or training tire and work her for a couple of hours. After a while, she is considerably less “prancy” and is more apt to give my hands a break. If you horse doesn’t seem to offer to bolt, this may just be a quirk on her part. Still, keep even pressure on the lines and talk her down (ie: “easy Maggie, etc”).

With any driving horse, you don’t want to drive on a loose line necessarily. While you don’t want to be hanging on your horse’s mouth, you do want contact at all times. If she’s dragging on your hands, you may need to have her bitted down a notch (what kind of bit do you use?). We use a copper-mouth curb bit with butterfly sides (so we can go down a notch if we need more leverage on a particular horse). This is a fairly mild bit; but it’s also got enough “umph” to get the job done with the stronger-mouthed horses. With Sadie, I usually have her bitted down one notch.

With riding horses, you do often want the horse to sit nicely behind the bit; but with driving, you need to have that contact with your horse since you’re not sitting on them communicating directly. If your horse jumps and you have lots of slack in the lines, they have that much further momentum to get running.

If your other horse doesn’t seem to be feeding off her anxiety or excitement, just keep working them slowly and let her get used to things.

Thanks, Vand. I had missed your response when you made it, I wasn’t ignoring it! I just happened to look up at the post above gunslinger598’s and saw my screen name. It had been so long since I posted it that I had forgotten what the issue was.

I never did see much change in her behaviour, but I didn’t harness much in the summer as the heat indices were consistently in the 100 degree plus range; in June and July they were more like 112 to 118 for weeks at a time. I know from previous experience that is not worth a darn trying to deal with my animals when we are all miserable from the heat.

I just started harnessing up again and so far she has not gotten real prancy, but I haven’t asked her to do much pulling either. I have been using a broken snaffle on egg butt rings, but am going to go to the military elbow that Jason Rutledge talked about. I keep forgetting to do that, glad you brought this up so I can get busy and order up a couple of bits. I am also going to drive them in some open bridles to see if that makes any difference.

[OldKat]

I have an update for you bivol. Today I was working around my lot and I turned old Oklahoma! and Junior into about a 2 acre trap that is adjacent to my lot, but which I don’t own. It is behind Albert, the neighbors house. He has no livestock so he lets me use it. It only has an electric fence on two of the sides, and if anything gets past that it is on to open highway so I generally graze it only when I am going to be nearby.

I was moving some round bales around with my tractor and then went up to the barn to measure out feed for the critters. I heard a vehicle drive up and heard my gate open so I stepped out to see Roger, the guy that leases the property that is across the fence from my lot and Alberts property. He told me that my bull was in his pasture fighting with his bull. I looked behind Albert’s house and sure enough Oklahoma! was gone. Junior was there, but the old man had split. We hopped in our trucks and drove around to the barn on the place he leases just in time to see his Charolais bull chase Oklahoma! right through a barbed wire fence and into the area where Roger stores his round bales. The Charolais was right behind Oklahoma! and they both went through the fence.

Oklahoma! was looking for the hole in the fence where he came in, as the Charolais bull, Rusty, was working him over pretty good. He finally got up behind some round bales and worked himself up into a corner where that property meets a fourth place, right directly behind my lot. So I came up the fence line with a bucket of feed hoping to lure my guy out. He was so winded that he could only stand there puffing. I cautiously came up beside him, because I could tell he was pretty agitated. I stepped near his rear to try to drive him out of there, only to meet an even madder Rusty coming up the back row of the round bales.

When I stepped between the two, Rusty charged me. So I stepped back behind the round bales, thinking “Oklahoma!, buddy you are pretty much on your own here. I’m not going to get run over by this guy to bail you out!” I think Rusty was startled by my being there, so he stopped momentarily and started blowing at me. I figured he was a little unsure of himself, otherwise he would have kept coming. Had he, I would have either had to been able to jump up on the round bales or get run over by a 2,400 pound Red Angus and/or about a 2,000 pound Charolais. The idea of being caught between the two of these mature bulls had very little appeal.

All of a sudden I thought about our discussion on this thread, so I took off my baseball style cap and waved it over the Charolais face; keeping the corner of the round bale between me and him. Sure enough, he looked up at it and when he did I made a fist and put all of my 270 pounds into his nose. He literally staggered backward. When he did, I stepped out and gave him another one right in the nose, or at least tried. When he saw me come out he wheeled and I just clipped his nose with a round house. Roger had opened the gate to that lot and Rusty went past him like his butt was on fire. Roger asked me “What happened back there?”, so I told him what I did. He laughed and said; “I’ll be damned, I would have never thought about doing that”. Well, quite honestly had we not been discussing it recently I wouldn’t have either.

Everything worked out ok. Roger and I pushed Oklahoma! through what was left of the fence that he had gone through. I got him back on my lot and looked him over, it appears that he is okay. Mainly just had his ego bruised a bit. He was pretty tired. I think I’ll put up some more electric fence before I allow him back over in that trap again. Thought about you, and I knew you would enjoy hearing about the big day Oklahoma! and OldKat had. 🙂

[OldKat]

Hey Bumpus, interesting story. Maybe the man that told you that was a lot like the old timer in the cafe who upon seeing the guy next to him enjoying the chicken soup, which happened to be the soup du jour, said; “That is pretty good soup, but it isn’t soup du jour” To which the other fellow replied; “It isn’t?”. The old timer said; “Naw, I’ve had soup du jour before and it is tomato!”

I guess when and where you are may impact the way commands are used and what those commands are about like what day of the week it is impacts what the soup du jour is! 🙂

[Author]

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