Our smallest oxen team turned nine months old this past summer. Cat (short for Caterpillar) and Diesel are doing well with their “oxen” training. The boys have worked with them on leads individually, teaching them "whoa", "giddup", and "step over". They've taken the calves over all kinds of obstacles, through water, through brush, over logs, and such, getting them used to as much as possible. They can also pick up their feet, a big bonus with daddy.
We trained our oldest team without a yoke at this age, however, knowing what we know now, we believe starting them in a "mini" yoke at this age should make them that much better when we put them to work. They won't have to learn new commands along with learning how to pull. We are hoping to have this team comfortable with the yoke and pulling by the time they are big enough to really pull some weight.
PW has an artistic inclination, so we prompted him to put his talent into building a training yoke for the little team. He was reluctant at first but as we got out the material detailing how to build your own yoke and started reading through it, breaking it down into steps, he became more interested. We found an excellent set of directions including a pattern, which we could place on a piece of wood and trace around once converted for size. I ended up doing most of this part as it required a vast amount of math which I haven't used in years, (if I ever knew it in the first place). I personally do not like math, and this stretched my limited knowledge to the "inth" degree. We finally managed, as a group effort, to come up with a pattern that looked like a yoke.
We laid the pattern on a suitable piece of lumber and traced around it. Daddy cut along the lines with a chainsaw to make the carving out process a little easier for PW.
With hammer and chisel he was ready to tackle the project.
He allowed teammate MJW to take a few blows with the hatchet.
When the yoke was finished we ordered some little 1-inch diameter No. 5 bows from the Hine Family in Massachusetts. They are tiny compared to our larger working bows, so cute. Unfortunately Cat and Diesel were not as impressed as we were.
CW worked with them though and after a time they started picking up their heads, realizing this thing was not going to eat them.
They are now being taught "GEE" and "HAW". They are learning to "Backup" together and "Giddup" and of course "WHOA".
Their personalities are following in the footsteps of their predecessors, Diesel is all fired up and ready to go, and Cat is slow and methodical, if not a little lazy. Our other two teams are also like that. There always has to be one steer that wants to slack off, and not pull his full weight.
They are doing remarkably well, after a few sessions in the yoke, learning to work together.
Kit used tines from a broken pitchfork to build these tiny bow pins.
He also built a staple and found an old ring for it. So the boys are equipped to start teaching the little team a thing or two about pulling.
They have been using them on nice easy cleanup jobs around the house. We aren't hooking them to anything they can't pull easily. We don't want to teach them they can't pull. Besides, it is fun to do the clean up when you can claim you are training oxen at the same time!
CW, and JW1 have been taking the team down to the woodlot and teaching them to walk in the brush and drag branches. They were perfect for it.
As the boys were working the baby team, they attracted the attention of the older teams. They all came running up to the electric fence, to voice their opinions.
You could just hear them giving the little team the horse laugh!
"Hey, get a REAL log." "GEE, that means right!" "Put some muscle into it." "OXEN? HA, HA, HA."