- Oxen (plural of ox) are large and heavy set breeds of Bos Taurus cattle
trained as draft animals.
- Often they are adult, castrated males.
- Usually an ox is over four years old due to the need for training
and to allow it to grow to full size.
- Oxen are used for plowing, transport, hauling cargo, grain-grinding
by trampling or by powering machines, irrigation by powering pumps,
and wagon drawing.
- Oxen were commonly used to skid logs in forests, and sometimes still
are, in low-impact select-cut logging.
- Oxen are most often used in teams of two, paired, for light work such
as carting. In the past, teams might have been larger, with some teams
exceeding twenty animals when used for logging.
- Oxen must be painstakingly trained from a young age.
- Oxen can pull harder and longer than horses, particularly on obstinate
or almost un-movable loads
- They are less prone to injury because they are more sure-footed and
do not try to jerk the load.
- Many oxen are still in use worldwide, especially in developing countries.
- In the Third World oxen can lead lives of misery, as they are frequently
malnourished. Oxen are driven with sticks and goads when they are weak
from malnutrition
- The gait of the ox is often important to ox trainers, since the speed
the animal walks should roughly match the gait of the ox driver who
must work with it.
- An ox is nothing more than a mature bovine with an "education."
The education consists of the animal's learning to respond appropriately
to the teamster's (ox driver's) signals.
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