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Plowing with Oxen, Nova Scotia, Canada, 1881.

Zebu pulling an ox cart in Mumbai, India.

Oxen used in farms for plowing.

Brahman riding-ox at the Feria de Hidalgo in Pachuca, Hidalgo

An ox (plural oxen), also known as a bullock in Australia and India, is a bovine trained as a draft animal or riding animal. Oxen are commonly castrated adult male cattle; castration makes the animals more docile.^{[citation needed]} Cows (adult females) or bulls (intact males) may also be used in some areas.

Oxen are used for plowing, for transport (riding, pulling carts and hauling wagons), for threshing grain by trampling, and for powering machines that grind grain or supply irrigation among other purposes. Oxen may be also used to skid logs in forests, particularly in low-impact, select-cut logging.

Draft oxen are usually yoked in pairs. Light work such as carting household items on good roads may only require one pair, while for heavier work, further pairs would be added as necessary. A team used for a heavy load over difficult ground might exceed nine or ten pairs.

Domestication

Oxen are thought to have first been harnessed and put to work around 4000 BC.^[1]

Training

A team of ten pairs of oxen in Australia.

Working oxen are taught to respond to the signals of the teamster or ox-driver. These signals are given by verbal command and body language, reinforced by a goad, whip or a long pole (which also serves as a measure of length: see rod). In pre-industrial times, most teamsters were known for their loud voices and forthright language.

Verbal commands for working animals vary widely throughout the world. In North America, the most common commands are:

• 
  Back: back up


• 
  Gee: turn to the right


• 
  Get up (also giddyup or giddyap, contractions for "get thee up" or "get ye up"): go


• 
  Haw: turn to the left


• 
  Whoa: stop

In the New England tradition, young castrated cattle selected for draft are known as working steers and are painstakingly trained from a young age. Their teamster makes or buys as many as a dozen yokes of different sizes for each animal as it grows. The steers are normally considered fully trained at the age of four and only then become known as oxen.^[2]

A tradition in south eastern England was to use oxen (often Sussex cattle) as dual-purpose animals: for draft and beef. A plowing team of eight oxen normally consisted of four pairs aged a year apart. Each year, a pair of steers of about three years of age would be bought for the team and trained with the older animals. The pair would be kept for about four years, then sold at about seven years old to be fattened for beef – thus covering much of the cost of buying that year's new pair. Use of oxen for plowing survived in some areas of England (such as the South Downs) until the early twentieth century. Pairs of oxen were always hitched the same way round, and they were often given paired names. In southern England it was traditional to call the near-side (left) ox of a pair by a single-syllable name and the off-side (right) one by a longer one (for example: Lark and Linnet, Turk and Tiger).^[3]

Ox trainers favor larger animals for their ability to carry and pull heavier loads. They are therefore usually of larger breeds, and are usually males because they are generally larger. Females can also be trained as oxen, but they are smaller; they are often more valued for producing calves and milk. Bulls are also used in many parts of the world as oxen, especially Asia and Africa.^[4][5]

Shoeing

A single left-hand oxshoe of the type used for large Chianina oxen in Tuscany

Karel Dujardin, 1622–1678: A Smith Shoeing an Ox

Working oxen usually have oxshoes,^[6] which are metal devices nailed into their hooves, used to protect them from excessive wear. The continual strain borne on their feet by the weight they carry may injure and lead to cracking of the hooves, just as with horses. Despite this, in England, not all working oxen were shod.^[7] Since their hooves are cloven, two separate parts are required for each hoof, unlike the single shoe of a horse. Oxshoes are usually of a flat shape with an outline similar to a half-moon or a banana, either have or do not have caulkins, and are fitted in symmetrical pairs to the hooves. Unlike horses, oxen are not easily able to balance on three legs while a farrier shoes the fourth.^[6][8] In England, shoeing was accomplished by laying the ox on the ground and lashing all four feet to a heavy wooden tripod until the shoeing was complete.^[6] A similar technique was used in Serbia^[9] and, in a simpler form, in India,^[10] where it is still practiced.^[11] In Italy, where oxen may be very large, shoeing is accomplished using a massive framework of beams in which the animal can be partly or completely lifted from the ground by slings passed under the body; the feet are then lashed to lateral beams or held with a rope while the shoes are fitted.^[12][13]

Ox shoeing sling in the Dorfmuseum of Mönchhof, Austria; a pair of oxshoes is attached to the near left column

Such devices were made of wood in the past, but may today be of metal. Similar devices are found in France, Austria, Germany, Spain, Canada and the United States, where they may be called ox slings, ox presses or shoeing stalls.^[8][14] The system was sometimes adopted in England also, where the device was called a crush or trevis; one example is recorded in the Vale of Pewsey.^[7] The shoeing of an ox partly lifted in a sling is the subject of John Singer Sargent's painting Shoeing the Ox,^[15] while A Smith Shoeing an Ox by Karel Dujardin shows an ox being shod standing, tied to a post by the horns and balanced by supporting the raised hoof.

Riding equipment

Riding a four-year-old Texas Longhorn cow with a halter

An ox being ridden in Central Asia in the 1860s

While less efficient and sensibly less prevalent than horses, the riding of cattle as a means of transportation has happened throughout history, and the act is sometimes known as ox riding and oxback riding. There are many forms of riding equipment used by oxen, and some slightly differ from those used by horses. A wide-girthed saddle is mounted on the ox’s back for the rider to sit on.^[16] A bridle may attach to reins that the rider holds to direct the animal; alternatively, they may have a nose ring pierced through their septum that is directly attached to reins or attached to a bridle that is attached to the reins.^[17] While horses may have a bit, the near-equivalent for cattle is the nose ring,^[16] although this procedure is painful to the ox. As previously mentioned, they are not only controlled by being steered using reins; working animal-voice commands (giddyup, whoa, gee, haw, and back) are also used to signal the starting, stopping, and direction of movement. Cattle are far less comfortable to ride than horses, as they are much wider. Thus, the rider’s legs must be considerably far apart from each other.

Uses and comparison to other working animals

Oxen can pull heavier loads, and pull for a longer period of time than horses depending on weather conditions.^[18] In addition, well-trained oxen are considered less excitable than horses.^{[by whom?]} On the other hand, they are also slower than horses, which has both advantages and disadvantages; their pulling style is steadier, but they cannot cover as much ground in a given period of time. For agricultural purposes, oxen are more suitable for heavy tasks such as breaking sod or plowing in wet, heavy, or clay-filled soil. When hauling or being ridden, oxen can move very heavy loads in a slow and steady fashion. They are at a disadvantage compared to horses when it is necessary to carry or pull a load relatively quickly.

For millennia, oxen also could pull heavier loads because of the use of the yoke, which was designed to work best with the neck and shoulder anatomy of cattle. Until the invention of the horse collar, which allowed the horse to engage the pushing power of its hindquarters in moving a load, horses could not pull with their full strength because the yoke was incompatible with their anatomy.^[19]

See also

• Aurochs


• 
  Bullock cart (ox-cart)


• 
  Bullocky (ox-driver, teamster)


• Ox (zodiac)


• Ox in Chinese mythology


• 
  Ox-wagon (bullock wagon)


• Oxtail


• Ridge and furrow

References

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Oxen.