Rising petroleum prices will make ox power competitive

November 24, 2005

Working oxen.

I can confirm that Hare krishna devi is correct in the working life of an

ox. Here at Bhaktivedanta Manor we train our ox at three and then they can

do light work and cart transportation. At five they are big enough for more

serious work and they can work through to at least 15 years. We retire ours

at 15 although on reflection there are some that could continue working on

light duties well beyond.

Plowing with oxen.

Old english plows had a furrow width of 9 inches and these could be pulled

for the whole day by a team of horses and presumably a team of oxen. This

would generally cover the whole acre.

We plough with a ride on sulky plow bought from the Pioneer amish community.

The furrow width is 12 inches and consequently is a bit too much for an ox

team to plow all day. In reality we do about half an acre a day. You could

use the 12inch sulky plow with oxen if you had three oxen hitched up to it.

This would be done by having a team on a yoke and one ox on a single yoke

and conected using a three ox (horse) evener. The oxen would all stand side

by side in the same way as a three horse hitch.

Grain growing.

Our plan for 2005/2006 is to grow 6 acres of beans and 6 acres of barley for

cow feed. All the cultivation work and sowing will be done by oxen and man.

The harvesting we will do by contracting our local farmer with his combine

harvester. We will discharge the grain from the combine and into waiting

carts, wagons, tarpaulins etc. The grain will be transported by oxen and

loaded into the grain store using a skid steer loader (doesn't compete with

the oxen).

Wheat.

We do not grow wheat and may not for some time. The temple gets so much

chappati flour donated that there is no necessity of growing wheat

ourselves. The temple thinks it is not practical to get rid of the donated

chappati flour and then to have a cost of producing our own wheat and flour.

As ox men we would however prefer to grow our own wheat. Hopefully one year

soon we may still move forward on this.

ys syam

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