8 in hand hitch of…cows!

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  • November 27, 2012 at 1:00 am #75220
    jen judkins
    Participant

    Not to take away from the cow discussion…but I was amazed by the beautiful competition teams with NO BRITCHEN….how do they brake the cart? Do all these carts have onboard brakes? Seems dangerous to me. Just curious about it.

    November 27, 2012 at 1:47 am #75219
    grey
    Participant

    Foot brake on the wagonettes, yes. But also the straps that go from the end of the pole to the dee at the center of the breastcollar or around the throat of the neck collar…. those provide braking. Not the best arrangement (spoken from my lofty Western-centric feeling of superior harness technology), but it does work if the vehicle is light. You’ll see that some of the breastcollar harnesses have a strap that wraps around the neck to counteract any downward pull from the wagonette pole. That puts some of the braking on the crest of the neck. Many of the breastcollar harnesses have the traces secured at the girth before continuing back to the singletree or roller bolts. So when the breastcollar gets pulled foreward by the pole, the girth helps anchor it. It is likely that some – if not many – of those horses have never felt a britchen. Some people in the sport of combined driving feel that a britchen is too confining for the horse to perform his best.

    November 27, 2012 at 5:05 pm #75221
    near horse
    Participant

    I’ll try to get a copy of a photo from the Ag Museum at Pomeroy, WA that shows 6 abreast oxen – I think on a plow. That’s a wide load for sure.

    November 29, 2012 at 4:00 pm #75236
    bendube
    Participant

    I found some neat numbers in an old cornell publication on animals for traction:

    In one study of 69 farms in Germany (1948), the moderate-production milk cows used for draught produced 4344 kg milk/year if not working and 4066 kg/year if worked 700-1000 hrs per year. That is equivalent to losing a little less than 80 gallons of milk a year, or about a gallon for every ten hours of work. On days that the cows worked a for 5 hours, milk yield decreased by 10-20%. If you’re selling raw milk and don’t have enough to meet demand, that means that working a team of cows costs about $1-$2 an hour. If you have too much and the milk would otherwise go to a calf or to the pigs…

    Other studies suggested that “light work” may actually increase milk yield, while working an animal hard for long hours could cause milk output to collapse.

    December 1, 2012 at 12:59 am #75232
    Oxhill
    Participant

    Bendube: If that publication is online could you post a link?

    In a SFJ article by Rolf Minhorst he cites a study by the German government in 1930. Of 7.1 million dairy cows of various dual purpose breeds 2.3 million were also being used as working cows. For farms up to 7 hectors or roughly 17 acres it was more profitable to work the cows rather than use dedicated oxen or horses. He states that the cows would be worked in turns to avoid overburdening them and that it didn’t influence fertility or the quality of the milk. Any reduction in milk volume was compensated by the use of their labor.

    I have a bunch of links on working cows I will dig up.

    December 1, 2012 at 6:02 pm #75237
    bendube
    Participant

    Here’s the : link
    Its a Cornell survey article on animal traction for development from 1980
    On page 27, the researchers summarize the various studies that they dug up related to working cows in Germany, including the one that I mentioned above. I’d love to look at the originals, but I can’t speak German.

    Do you know what edition of SFJ that article appeared in?

    December 1, 2012 at 9:23 pm #75233
    Oxhill
    Participant

    Thank you sir!

    @bendube 37896 wrote:

    Do you know what edition of SFJ that article appeared in?

    Sure. Winter 1991 Vol 15 No 1. The article is on page 37 and titled The Evolution of Draft Cattle Harness In Germany. It talks mostly about how the three pad collar came about and why he feels it is superior. I think he overstates the criticisms of yokes but it is still a good read.

    December 3, 2012 at 6:21 pm #75222
    near horse
    Participant

    Ben – you can use an online translator like Babelfish to translate into English (sometimes the interpretation is a little loose but workable).

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