Our oxen in the paper

[Kevin Cunningham]

Our oxen were featured in an article for the weekly newspaper. The writer plugs the DAPnet and I would like to thank everybody on the forum here that I have learned from over the years. Your help has been invaluable. This year the oxen are doing more than ever around the farm and in the garden and I am really starting to feel like a draft farmer. I am glad for the good press. http://www.northcoastjournal.com/humboldt/team-oxen/Content?oid=3704858

[Carl Russell]

Great job Kevin, you are definitely doing some great work these days. I am pleased to see the way those steers have turned out. You were pretty discouraged a few times, and you just hung in there. It is also great that teamsters from DAP.com were able to be your long distance support system.

Keep it up man, Carl

[Does’ Leap]

Great article, thanks for sharing. I am curious why you decided to start another team. Are you planning on running two teams? Selling the older team?

The question of efficiency and how many animals comes up on our farm periodically. A team of two horses is the perfect number for most of the year, but falls short during the haying season. We split the difference by having 3 we can harness.

George

[Kevin Cunningham]

I am proud of my first team but I also made many many mistakes so I am training a second team to replace the first team. My big team is 5 so they are in their prime but oxen don’t have the longevity that horses do and by about 8 I expect the big boys to start lagging. The new team is 2 so by the time the other team is old they will be in their prime. I can envision a system on our farm where we are starting and retiring a team almost every year. We do plan on harvesting the beef from the oxen so we also may not want them to get too old and fat. I have ever worked multiple teams but I can already see where it would be nice to have the extra power. We have some big timber in our area and having multiple teams could make a big difference there. Plus oxen are like potato chips you can;t just have one!

[CharlyBonifaz]

>>Plus oxen are like potato chips you can;t just have one!<<
how true!

[Author]

Posts