Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
It was the Enclosures Act of 1801, and with it the demise of a medieval open-fields
approach to farming, that started a rapid decline in the use of oxen as beasts of burden.
On the land a team of six or eight great beasts harnessed in pairs one behind the other
was just too unwieldy to plough or harrow into corners of the new, smaller fields, but
two or three horses harnessed side by side could do so with ease. 31
However, it is by no means certain that a horse would do the work of two oxen. This is
Lord Kames writing in 1776:
As oxen have less air and spirit in moving than horses their motion is concluded to
be slower. They are less expeditious than horses in galloping or trotting it is true but
as farm work is performed in stepping, let the step of an ox and a horse be compared
and the ox will be found not to be inferior especially where an ox is harnessed like a
horse.
Colonel Pool in Derbyshire ploughs as much ground in a day with three oxen as
neighbouring farmers do with four or five horses. In summer they eat nothing but
grass, in winter they have hay and turnips when much wrought, straw only when
wrought moderately. About Bawtry in Yorkshire, four oxen in a plough do as much
as the same number of horses. Near Beaconsfield, Mr Burke ploughs an acre in a day
with four oxen and his neighbours do no more with four horses. 32
Although less spirited than the horse, there nevertheless seems to have been some affec-
tion for the ox's meeker and more compliant temperament:
Once a pair was selected they became each other's companions for life, working
side-by-side and never far apart whether grazing in meadows or sleeping in the ox
barn. Each ox had a name and within the pair one had a single syllable name and one
had a longer name. So Quick and Nimble, Pert and Lively, Hawk and Pheasant all
spent their working lives together. 33
This convention, if it were ever true, is not universal. The oxen at Bhaktivedanta Manor
in Hertfordshire respond to polysyllabic Sanskrit names, and are not always worked togeth-
er in the same team - though an ox which is used to working on the right hand side (ie
walking in the furrow), will tend to be kept in that position, as will the ox habituated to
working on the left (ie on the land). My very limited experience with oxen leads me to be-
lieve that they are probably easier than horses, because they are naturally slower and stead-
ier, and with arable cultivation, slow and steady wins the race every time. At Bhaktivedanta
I witnessed a three year old who had never been harnessed or broken before, yoked and
guided round a yard by a novice within two hours.
 
 
 
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