Best choice for a team?

[Joshua Kingsley]

I have 3 holstine bulls that I have been working with since august. My question is two are black and white that mach almost to a t as they are half brothers out of a mother and daughter. The third is a red and white, the red and white Bear and Buck one of the black and whites are a good match for size and they are a good pair to work with. My other calf the black and white is Beau he likes to be DIRTY as possible and is bull headed and a real pain in the butt to work with, he won’t lead, stand or allow himself to be yoked nearly as nice as the other two.

My question is should I keep the pair of brothers and ditch the red and white or should I keep the pair that works well and sacrifice the “look” of a matched team. Or should I keep the pair that works well together and is a real good pair to work with.

Joshua

[Tim Harrigan]

Is it more important to you to have a team that works well or looks good?

[Joshua Kingsley]

They just have to work. I have been leaning toward the red / black team. The guys that work steers locally want the teams to match perfectly or they are out. of course they like to show so that may be thier motivation. If I had my choice I would rather have started a team that was what I wanted for a breed. I would like to get Dexters so this is just a play with them for a while..
Joshua

[Tim Harrigan]

You have to decide what is most important. I know what things are most important to me and matched color or size are not near the top of the list. There are a lot of benefits to showing steers. The drawback is some of the superficial things that are important in the show ring are not at all important if you want a team that is responsive and works well, but those things become the tail that wags the dog. I know there is bound to be a lot of joshing around among teamsters, but if someone is critical of another team because they do not color match I guess you have to call on Homer Simpson to sum it up… “Lord help me Marge, I’m just not that bright”.

[CharlyBonifaz]

he likes to be DIRTY as possible and is bull headed and a real pain in the butt to work with, he won’t lead, stand or allow himself to be yoked nearly as nice as the other two.

does this sound like he could be useful in showing??

[Joshua Kingsley]

I don’t intend to show them and I don’t think it would be good for a show animal that likes to be dirty, they tend to need alot more prep for the ring…. I used to show cattle in 4-H and some just liked to find the most muck possible.
Dad and I have made the decision to go with the mis-matched team based on attatude and workablility. The other steer to be will be tasty in the spring or some time in the next year or so. The other concern was the red and white is about 10 days older and at this point is about an inch taller than the black. I am hoping that they will even out or will still work alright.
As has been said before an Ox is a mistake that you can eat so I’ll give it a go with my dad. though it is hard to want to mess with the steers when I have the horses to play with. There is a suffolk mare and foal and a pair of ponies that are begging for more attention as well. some say you can never have to much power on the farm.
Joshua

[CharlyBonifaz]

best of luck and lots of fun!
yes, some days could take more hours………….
btw: I think this team is perfectly matched when they work well together 😉

[Joshua Kingsley]

Thanks, I would really have liked to have a pair of dexters for a team but that was not an option at the time. Dad owns and opperates a commercial dairy so I have choice of some decent dairy bull calves. Best of luck to all with thier teams. Joshua

[Patrick]

I was surprised at seeing a team this fall of Holsteins, one red the other black. Although not matched in the traditional sense, they still made an attractive team, I thought. I liked seeing one example of each variety. It helped introduce the rarer red to people who previously thought that Holsteins come in only black.

Another thought: if Dexters are in your plans, get rid of the well behaved animals, and keep the one that’s difficult. If you want Dexters, you’ll need all the experience you can get handling difficult steers!

[Joshua Kingsley]

Patrick,
I owned dexters till I lost my cow in 05 to gangreen, I still have a dexter/ jersey cross hefier. I have had plans to have dexters for the last 12 years or so and also suffolks. I now have the suffolks and just need to get back into the dexter game. I never had much problem with the dexers. I used to handle them alot though and I have to say that I don’t care for the holstines as much as I did my dexters. If you want to have some nice steers that will be bigger drop me a line I would be willing to let them go so I could find what I really want. Joshua

[bivol]

@Joshua Kingsley 14386 wrote:

I have 3 holstine bulls that I have been working with since august. My question is two are black and white that mach almost to a t as they are half brothers out of a mother and daughter. The third is a red and white, the red and white Bear and Buck one of the black and whites are a good match for size and they are a good pair to work with. My other calf the black and white is Beau he likes to be DIRTY as possible and is bull headed and a real pain in the butt to work with, he won’t lead, stand or allow himself to be yoked nearly as nice as the other two.

My question is should I keep the pair of brothers and ditch the red and white or should I keep the pair that works well and sacrifice the “look” of a matched team. Or should I keep the pair that works well together and is a real good pair to work with.

Joshua

Joshua, how well do the “good” black calf and the red calf match in yoke?
are they willing to cooperate?

not worth to have to train and work 10 years with an animal who just doesn’t have the temper to work. my advice would be to train Bear and Buck so the team gets well trained to earn its keep and that you enjoy working them.and from what i red Beau isn’t enjoyable to work with…

you said you don’t want to show them in the ring, so looks are not really an issue. even more, what you said about calf called Beau is that i don’t know if i’d make the trouble of training such an un cooperating animal in the first place. he can probably get trained, but why bother when you might have one more tractable next to him

and one more thing: i honestly don’t understand why people want matched coloring. i love mismatched animals the most, and it’s a regular practice in Chile to have one black and one red animal in a team. you can tell them apart from the distance and on a glance, which is practical.

if you intend to use them for work, you should pick ones that respond best and are matched in temperament. and is you happen to go to the ring, at least you’ll jump out with mismatched steers, but you can always say it was historically a common practice…

Marko

[mother katherine]

Bivol,
I enjoy your comments and videos. The note that it was common in chile to have different colored beasts under yoke is interesting. I wonder whose culture it came from? The Spanish or indigenous?
Without getting into the ideological problems, I’ve been wanting to ask for some time: which of various former Yugoslavian peoples are you from? We have Serbs in our area, some displaced Bosnians and probably others I haven’t met yet.
I download a lot of your stories and pictures from “the old country” to give them. They entertain me with stories and teach me various words and phrases.
What is oxnun or ox drover in your language?
oxnun

[bivol]

hi oxnun!

i’m gled you enjoy the writing and vids, i hope it is helpful, as i learn a lot from other people here!

i guess the different colouring came with the german settlers (the chilean oxen look a lot like simmental, only not as much selected), as this practice is seen only in Chile, and nowhere else in south america, to my knowledge.
german settlers settled in chile quite often, you still have in some parts architecture reminding of german one.

my videos are from istria, that’s a peninsula near italy, and histrians are nice people, one feels at home there, no nationalism or harted as it is costumary in most parts of ex-yu.

where i come from? no problem!

i am born and live in Zagreb, and am officialy Croatian. but in fact am a half-croatian (dad’s side) and half-serbian (mom’s side). i have relatives in Serbia and Macedonia, and for me national identity is not as important as for most nationally hysterical people in ex-yu. i mean, a good person is a good person no matter the nationality, and a bad one will stay a bad one no matter its nation.

i don’t want to go too much off topic here so i’ll stop here, although there would be much to write about.

we in croatian don’t have a distinct word for a person who works oxen. we tend to say “he works oxen” or so.
actually people in crioatia, bosnia and serbia speak a very similar language, even if they all like to say they have distinctive languages LOL

vol – this is the word for an ox
volovi – plural for ox
volovska kola – oven wagon (in our language we have only word for wagon, and have no word for cart)

volovska zaprega – this is literary translated “oxen’s hitch-together”, and could be translated as oxen yoke, oxen team or, again, oxen wagon

volovodja (volovodya) – leader of oxen

volar – a person who works about oxen, with nothing specific

distinct serbian word – rabadžija (rah-bad-gee-ya) – a commercial freighter who for a daily fee, rents himself and his oxen wagon for transportation of goods and timber extraction. still in work in mountainous parts of Bosnia and Serbia. coming from “rabota” meaning “work”.

also a serbian word (i think), but used in croatia too – kirijaš (kiri-yash) – same meaning as above, “kirija” meaning rent or wage?

all these words were interchangable and used by parts of both ethnic groups, so pinpointing wouldn’t end up in a constructive conclusion.

Rudo – (roo-do) a pole connecting the yoke to the plow. to it is a proverb (ne trchi pred rudo) atached, or “don’t run in front of the pole”, or you’ll fall and end up trampled, which means don’t be fast (on your conclustion), or, don’t jump to the conclusions!

if you have further questions, do feel free to ask!

Marko

[OldKat]

bivol wrote:

i mean, a good person is a good person no matter the nationality, and a bad one will stay a bad one no matter its nation.

Well said my friend.

Sounds like your native language tends to make compound words out of individual words, somewhat like the Germans do. What is the word for a “nun” anyway?

[bivol]

@OldKat 14543 wrote:

bivol wrote:

Well said my friend.

Sounds like your native language tends to make compound words out of individual words, somewhat like the Germans do. What is the word for a “nun” anyway?

thank you!

it’s from a different language group than german, although i like german a lot, too.
funny how i can remotely understand czech and ukrainian and russians, some words didn’t change although our language was isolated from other slavic languages up north.

nun on croatian is “opatica”, “o-pa-ti-tsa”, meaning a catholic nun

nun on serbian is “kaluđerka”, “kha-lou-dyer-ka”, meaning an orthodox church nun.

[Author]

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