Winter fun with 4

[Tim Harrigan]

Erika, I noticed in your picture that you have the 2 year olds in the back and usually the wheelers are heavy pullers. With oxen the tallest team would be the lead team whether or not they were the heavy pullers. Having the tallest team in front and the dropped point of the evener lower on the back team will help keep the correct line of draft from the front team to the load. It is hard to tell in the picture which team is taller.

[dominiquer60]

Tim,
I purposely put the 2 yo team on the wheel as they can pull the load no problem. Abe and Will are only 6 months old, and yes, almost as tall as the beef team. I really did not see the need to push the young ones by putting them on the wheel, especially not having a proper set up.

Abe and Will were out front more as an exercise to drive 4 while working only 2. I was glad that they kept the slack out of the chain and maybe eased the load for the wheelers, but it was not my intention to have them do much work. I knew what I was doing was not proper to work 4, but in the end my goal to drive 4 was certainly met without stressing any of us out. I was very happy with the results, and now realize what I should do in the future if I were to get more serious about working 4.

Thanks for the tips, I know that I have read similar info else where too, that is probably how I had heard about the evener. They certainly make sense and I hope to incorporate it all in the future if the opportunity arises.

Erika

[robc]

The vertical evener, as I understand it, also keeps the rear team’s yoke from being rotated forward anytime the front team is a little bit ahead, as would happen with a chain simply attached to both yokes. That way the rear team has a more comfortable orientation to its yoke.

Vicki, remember plowing last year with Zeus and Hermes behind Hershel and Walker, using the vertical evener? A fair amount of head scratching to get it hooked up, then it went pretty well. The hardest part was keeping my guys back far enough to avoid getting stepped on!

[B Grant]

I took this picture of Tillers’ vertical evener a couple of years ago when I was there. We were using it with a 4 ox hitch on a set of heavy tandem dics. The evener works great, once you figure it out!

Brendan

[B Grant]

I’ll try attaching the picture again…

[Tim Harrigan]

Thanks, nice view. If you look close you can see the additional holes for load distribution based on the ability of the teams.

[Author]

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