eastern ox-yoke: comfort and efficiency?

[bivol]

eastern ox yoke is a bent beam and put on animal to work singly for plowing and harrowing. the question is how comfortable it is for the animal and how much power can it generate using this system? this system works on taurine cattle, and the question is how well does it suit them?

the bigger the touching area the more comfort animal has. but is this symple system really efficient enough? i mean it does work.

[IMG]http://farm1.static.flickr.com/168/381645458_02bb57152b.jpg?v=0[/IMG]

[longshot38]

anyone know where to get plans/ directions for one of these? looks like it might pretty easy to make if one knows how to bend wood.

thanks
dean

[bivol]

they are basically bent wood, or iron, smoothed. i think the pictures offer enough detail. be creative, don’t let yourself be stopped just because there are no formal blueprints.
although i don’t think it covers enough surface. as you know, the more touching surface a yoke has, the less pressure per square cm there is on the neck. such system DOES work, but it causes yoke gall. remember, the land in the east is often flooded rice field and as such more easy to plow.

maybe you’d like this, it’s simple to make and much more effective. it’s been used in germany. i call it forehead strap. you can also use learher or padded cloth or car belt.

[bivol]

well, it’s been a long time, but i want to make some things right here.

i came to the conclusion that my reply was wrong. it is the eastern yoke that is more efficient than the forehead yoke.

in my recent research i found out that the eastern yoke can be almost as efficient as the bow yoke, but only when used on a bull or a stag. these have a pronounced neck muscling, which makes a big cushion for the yoke, which, being bent, grips around the neck for more surface. the rule is here, as everywhere: the more touching surface, the more comfort and more pushing power.

on making a yoke: my guess is that you would do best to first take the measure of neck thickness there you want to place your yoke,(that would be closer to the base of the neck, where cattle are said to pull more) with a wire on the angle where the yoke will be sitting. then you either bend wood or iron bars. if you use wood, round off the edges after you finish bending. drill the holes for ropes, two on the ends of the yoke, for pulling the implements, and two half way from the neck to the first holes. these will best be drilled so that the rope don’t go under the yoke where the animal pushes into it. better to use a wide cloth instead of a rope to disperse pressure and choking on the neck area.

[IMG]

[IMG]

all these bulls have wide necks and consequently a larger touching surface to this simple yoke. my opinion is that this yoke, with bull, could be well used on dry land, if one could find a smaller plow, or maybe a single horse one, too…

Dean, it took some time, but i hope i cleared it all up now.

cheers,

Marko

[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.

[bivol]

yes, he is plowing stubble, but i’ve seen these plows in their local variations do good work on clay soil too. only it goes really slow.:(..

do you notice the plow being a little tilted to the right? it’s not accidental, chinese mouldboard plows are for good part of designs symmetrical, like ard plows, so to form an angle and push the earth aside, they tilt the plows a bit. it’s actually brilliant!

what breed? my guess a common yellow chinese cattle bull, maybe a local strain. and i’ve wondered if it has a hump, but yesterday figured out it isn’t a humped animal, and probably no humped X humpless cross.

if you click on the small pictures, you’ll find another bull who has a pronounced neck muscles, but when the yoke tucks in, this forms a hump.

about peace corps, i’d like to try some extension work too, gotta check with my university, i think they could. btw. i’m studying agronomy, animal sciences!:D

[Nat(wasIxy)]

Sorry to dig this up but I love all these different harnessing styles!

With this one (the eastern single yoke) could it not be padded to increase surface area/comfort? and for a lesser muscled animal, would a narrower one not be OK – it woul then be just like a horse collar, a U shape, expect missing the bit just in front of the throat 😀

[Dick Roosenberg]

Oxen seem to gain comfort more from smooth and slick surfaces than from padded surfaces. I see more hair loss where padding is attempted.

If we bring the yoke around like a collar, we need to find a good way to protect the points of the shoulder in high draught work — ploughing and logging. The horse collar seems to work well on oxen when turned upside down and at low draught. But the shoulders of an ox move much more than the shoulders on a horse. Any yoke coming along the sides of the ox’s neck should probably be thin like the shafts of the bow of the neck yoke. It would be great if they would flex enough to accommodate the movement of the shoulders. This would keep continuous contact on each side of the neck.

It will take some good materials and clever design to accommodate the structure of the ox better than the old yokes have. Internationally, we at Tillers are experimenting with heavy walled PCV tubing for bows. It bends easily with heat and sand filling to keep it from collapsing. We have been amazed with a couple thousand in the field how few break. In work it flexes in interesting ways.

This thread has brought together some nice photos. Thanks.

[Nat(wasIxy)]

The padding could be like the wide pads on my three pad collar, and therefore miss the point of the shoulder altogether – it would essentially be like the hybrid offspring of a single yoke and a 3pad collar. I think it would be a lot simpler to make than the 3pad though.

[Dick Roosenberg]

I would love to see the design and test it. We have not been impressed by our tests of the 3 pad collar, especially under heavy draft. We keep looking for a better design than a well-fitted neck yoke. But we are quick to acknowledge that it does not work well on a single ox.

[Nat(wasIxy)]

I’ve never used a yoke, as I’m ignorant when it comes to woodwork and I wanted to encourage free movement and therefore speed in my oxen (not mention I’m working singles, and some dehorned!) – seems to have worked so far, almost a little too well. I think incorporating elements of a yoke using this system would certainly improve the strength of a collar, although the germans have ploughed with them for years and I doubt I’ll ever need to do heavier work than that.

I’d better get one made!

[bivol]

Ixy, glad you kindled this one again!

Well, one could significantly improve this yoke design by adding a wooden “cusion”, inside shaped to follow the curves of the neck(mush like a common neck seat). on top of it would go this same yoke. made some drawings, if you want’ could try to upload them.

the problem is that if the surface pressure decreases, there could (again: could, i’m not sure!) come to stronger sliding of the yoke up over the neck, which would put extra tension on the rope under the neck!

with current design, the yoke digs in the neck and the pressure of rope on the wind pipe is somewhat bearable.

Mr. Roosenberg, this one won’t work well under heavy draft. for one, plowing in the east with this yoke goes sloooow. another thing is that tests done on water buffalo, comparing the traditional design and a collar showed that the collar is better. and if you say the collar wasn’t satisfying, i wouldn’t be surprised that this eastern yoke works even worse.

but there is an alternative to angle-regulating yokes, like american design with low hitch point.

did you hear about fixed angle yokes?
they’re in use in eastern europe, look like this

here, the neck seat is, well, ridimentary. but one could make a rounded one, without expending much if any debth (and yoke strength) to lowering the hitch point.
everything – wagon tongues, whatever – has a hole in which this metal nail goes into to hold it. the nail (and angle of line of draft) also regulated the angle of neck seat to the necks of the animals.

and to my knowledge, the hitch-point itself doesn’t need to be very deep. this is a traditional Istrian yoke design, strangely similar to english and american designs.
the point with this yoke is that it doesn’t slide up and down the neck – ever- , it’s fixed by its teardrop-shaped bows, who offer a fixing spot and minimum of extra drag to (minimaly) lowered hitch-point. it doesn’t have a nail, btw. it has a twine “ring”, like american designs.

[bivol]

update!
eastern bow yoke could actually have some potential, but the iron pipe would, IMO, have to have a diameter of a strong human hand. once one’s bend it (sand inside, ect,) it could offer good touching surface on a broad neck.

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