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The Ox is Slow but the Earth is Patient: A very basic guide to the use of oxen

Written by Karen Bergstralh

From time to time we have had people drop in to 1632 Tech and ask, "What about oxen?" It is a fair question and we've suggested that someone familiar with oxen write a facts article. So far we've had no takers and, as the defacto livestock expert*, it appears that I am the one to attempt to fill this gap. I have no personal experience with oxen and what I know is gleaned from research. If anyone with experience spots a misstatement please contact me and I will do my best to correct it.

This piece is intended only as a very basic guide for our writers. Anyone writing a story that includes more than a passing mention of oxen is encouraged to do further research. In the Bibliography and Sources I've included The Rural Heritage website where one can post specific questions that will be answered by people who know and use oxen every day.

The ox may have been mankind's earliest draft animal. Written sources, paintings, and sculptures indicate their usage dates back a minimum of five thousand years. They are found in art and records from Egypt, Ur, and Babylon. Every farming civilization that has had access to some breed of bovine has used them for draft purposes.

An ox is defined as a neutered male bovine trained for and used as a draft animal. Steers are neutered male bovines that are not intended for use as draft animals. If a male calf is castrated before sexual maturity its growth patterns and personality are different than those of an unneutered male or a male neutered later. The changes, including longer legs and a more docile temperament, make the ox more suited for draft purposes than uncastrated stock or animals that are castrated after sexual maturity.

Not all bovines used for draft are oxen. I've found references to times and places where cows and the occasional bull have been used. At times and under some conditions any bovine might be used. If the only animals you have are a pair of cows, then your "ox" team will be a pair of cows.

Bovines are naturals for draft as both the horns and the neck area just in front of the shoulder blades lend themselves to the use of a simple wooden yoke. Yokes appear in three basic forms. The most familiar is the neck or bow yoke which consists of a shaped crosspiece (the yoke) that rests on the top of the ox's neck, just in front of his shoulder blades, and a U-shaped piece (the bow) that goes under the neck with its ends going up through two holes in the yoke. This type of yoke can be a single or a double yoke.

The horn or head yoke is a shaped piece of wood that rests behind the ox's horns and is strapped directly to the horns. The head yoke also comes in both single and double forms. The head yoke must be well fitted to the specific ox or oxen it is used with or it will quickly gall the sensitive areas at the base of the horns. Such a yoke cannot be used on polled (hornless) cattle.

The third form, the withers yoke, is a version of the neck yoke adapted for use with humped cattle such as the Zebu. Finding a Zebu in seventeenth century Europe is unlikely so such a yoke is unlikely to be either needed or known.

The earliest methods of harnessing onangers, donkeys, and horses to vehicles were derived from the ox yoke. Equine anatomy differs significantly from bovine so this was not a satisfactory method. The development of the horse collar can be traced back to man's attempts to replicate the usefulness of the neck and head yokes. The horse collar serves the same function, in that it allows the draft animal to put its full body weight and muscle power to use.

For stories set in the 1632 universe, some additional research may be needed by writers since both the neck yoke and head yoke were used throughout Europe. One source indicated that the head yoke was preferred in the mountain areas but there is enough evidence to indicate that it was used within all regions. Basically, either neck yokes or head yokes could appear anywhere. A farmer is most likely to use whichever type his father and grandfather used.

By the seventeenth century the use of oxen in agriculture was declining. It had not and would not completely disappear. Those farmers who could afford to preferred to use horses. Using oxen for farming had, to some extent, begun to carry the social stigma of being "backward" or indicating that the ox team's owner was too poor to afford horses. Heavy freighting still depended on ox teams and would do so in this timeline into the mid- to late-nineteenth century.

Despite the social stigma, oxen were the quickest and cheapest way to replace dead or stolen animals. In a pinch, cows could be used until their calves were old enough to work. In some areas of Bavaria farmers used cows for draft teams well into the twentieth century.

Oxen historically have always been cheaper than horses. As late as the mid-nineteenth century a pair or yoke of oxen cost half what a pair of horses or mules cost. This price ratio seems to have held true as far back as the 1100's. Cattle were cheap to buy ...