Ox cheeks saturday kitchen

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Ploughing with Oxen by George H. Oxen are usually yoked in pairs. Light work such as carting household items on good roads might require just 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. Oxen are thought to have first been harnessed and put to work around 4000 BC.

Working oxen are taught to respond to the signals of the teamster, bullocky or ox-driver. Verbal commands for draft animals vary widely throughout the world. 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. 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. Pairs of oxen were always hitched the same way round, and they were often given paired names. Ox trainers favor larger animals for their ability to do more work. Oxen are therefore usually of larger breeds, and are usually males because they are generally larger.

Females can also be trained as oxen, but as well as being smaller, are often more valued for producing calves and milk. Working oxen usually require shoes, although in England not all working oxen were shod. Since their hooves are cloven, two shoes are required for each hoof, as opposed to a single horseshoe. In England, shoeing was accomplished by throwing the ox to the ground and lashing all four feet to a heavy wooden tripod until the shoeing was complete.