On a Cold Night in 1978, my dad drove me 30 miles over snowy New England roads to look at a set of Brown Swiss twins. It was love at first sight. For $50 I bought the calves from Donald Hawes of Milford, New Hampshire. Being young, excited, and impatient to embark on my new adventure with my first pair of steers, I talked my dad into taking them home that night.
We loaded the calves onto the back seat of our two-door Toyota Corolla. Of course the young steers made a mess of the seats, and I scrubbed and cleaned the car before my mother saw it. As I look back on those early days, I can’t believe the things my parents endured for my love of working steers and oxen.
Once the calves were home, I faced what seemed like daunting challenges. The calves came down with scours. They were reluctant to follow me on the lead rope and even more reluctant in the yoke. I broke my leg two months after purchasing the calves. Neither of my parents had raised or trained oxen, so they could offer little advice.
Somehow I managed to train Zeb and Luke. I suppose I was motivated by my father’s insistence that we could always eat them if I couldn’t get them trained. I matured a lot while training those steers. One of the greatest lessons I learned was that there is no substitute for time spent working with animals. I also learned the importance of communicating with people and learning from the experience of others.
I learned how to train oxen from local experts. These were the men who had maintained the cultural tradition of driving oxen in New England, when the rest of the country had largely abandoned these animals nearly a century earlier.
I wrote The Oxen Handbook in 1985 after I realized how difficult it was to find information on raising and training oxen. I was constantly searching for information on oxen as understanding how to work and train my steers became an obsession. Being very shy (my friends today don’t believe that) I would rather have read books than asked strangers questions about training oxen. My quest for information forced me to overcome my shyness.
As a boy I never dreamed my oxen or my ideas would be featured in a number of films, videotapes, and magazines. Nor did I think my advice would ever be sought by people using oxen in competition, in agriculture, and in the forest. To this day I continue to seek the advice of many ox teamsters with more experience than myself. Attending oxen pulls and shows with my own teams subjects me to the criticism of the local experts whose knowledge and experience I value highly.
This book emphasizes New England methods of training and working oxen. Keeping ox teams today is primarily a hobby, and most oxen are used for exhibition and competition. Hobby oxen in this country are certainly less important than oxen used by farmers around the globe who depend on them for food production. Oxen, however, have been used in the forest and fields of New England for centuries, much as they are still used in other areas of the world today.
A team of oxen is the result of human-directed training and thought. For centuries many New England ox teamsters have begun training their animals as calves. Although the practice of training calves is not universal, it creates animals that are easy to work with and eager to please. Starting with calves is recommended for beginning teamsters and children interested in training steers or oxen.
For centuries, New England children have trained oxen. They often command such high levels of performance from their animals that they become the envy of many adult teamsters. Dozens of regional competitions see scores of children compete, mesmerizing crowds with their animal-handling skills.
Ox pulls and shows have always been a mainstay at agricultural fairs in the northeastern United States. These competitions create an environment where ox teamsters are quick to adopt new ideas and hone techniques in training and working cattle in order to gain an edge in competition. Much like other livestock competitors, ox teamsters in the United States strive for perfection in selecting, training, yoking, and working their teams. This opportunity has helped New England ox teamsters maintain a system of yoking, training, and driving oxen that is a unique New England phenomenon.
The ox was an important beast, and his image was recorded in many early photographs. Old yokes may still be found hanging in New England buildings. Were it not for the poor farmers who kept oxen in the yoke, the skills and techniques needed to train and drive them would have likely been lost.
I wrote The Oxen Handbook as an undergraduate documenting the tradition of driving and training oxen in the northeastern United States with little regard to their use or importance in other nations of the world. Since writing that book, I have gained a great deal of respect for other systems of working and training cattle. This respect and admiration come from personal experience with oxen and ox teamsters all over the United States, as well as the countries of Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya, Canada, England, and Cuba. Furthermore, my travels and communications have put me in touch with farmers, prominent researchers, authors, extension agents, and museum personnel from around the globe who promote and use oxen in their work.
As my own children grow and develop their interests in things other than oxen, I have found less time to work with my own teams. Conducting ox training workshops and working with new teamsters inspire me to get my team out of the pasture. I continue to make time for the youth in the New England 4-H Working Steer Program, where I got my own start with oxen. These hands-on educational activities have kept me in touch with the challenges that new ox teamsters face. They also remind me of the constant challenges of keeping a team comfortable in the yoke and willing to do any task demanded of them.
This book still emphasizes my cultural roots of learning to train and work cattle in New England; however, the principles can be applied anywhere. It has been amazing to observe other cultures outside the United States who use the same basic principles I have outlined in this book to train their animals. The challenge for new ox teamsters the world over is that cattle have no instinct to work. If you want them to respond to you in the yoke you have to follow through with a sequence of understanding the animals, then handling, and finally training, as outlined in chapters 5 to 7.
Anyone with patience, a basic understanding of cattle, and a sincere commitment to spend some time and effort can successfully train oxen.