Message from Padmagarbha dasa

[Guest guest]

Dear Padmagarbha Prabhu,

 

PAMHO AGTSP HARI BOL

 

Yes, oxen are very clever. If you dont think that a halter would work then a

rope nasal halter can be used. When I was in India resently I looked at the

bullocks and how they were driven in all the differant areas. In some areas

they used the nasal halter but in many areas the teamster sat on the cart and

just had a stick. He would talk to the animals and give commands. The stick

was used to emphasise the command if needed. I saw many bullock carts being

driven like that. The animals had no halters of any kind and they were in some

cases very heavy traffic conditions. I did not see any bullocks being driven

with nose rings.

 

With a halter or nasal halter you could use reins that would go from the halter

to the hands of the teamster such as with a horse but no bit in the mouth. The

nasal halter should be of cotton rope which is smooth. The nose is pierced

between the 2 nostrils and the rope goes thru them and then behind the horns

and is then tied. The rope can be changed periodically for health of the oxen

You can also use a halter like a horse would wear with a lead rope attached on

the left side where the teamster would work from or reins attached to the

halter so that you could control the movement of the head of the animal.

 

We have put part of your letter on the cow conference so you can possibly get

more feedback frommembers of the conference who use nose ropes.

 

By all means feel free to translate the ISCOWP information on the website into

Russian. This would be an important contirbution to cow protection and we

greatly appreciate your service. Communication on the translation topic can be

to my private address iscowp (AT) earthlink (DOT) net. A Russian translation of the

Minimum Cow Protection Standards along with the Cow report Form would be our

first suggestion, but we can discuss.

 

Looking forward to hearing from you soon,

 

yr servant,

Balabhadra das

-

Padmagarbha das

Iscowp {USER_LASTNAME}

Monday, April 08, 2002 10:28 PM

Message from Padmagarbha dasa

 

 

Hare Krishna! AGTSP.

Please accept my humble obeisances, dear prabhu.

I couldn't sufficiently train my ox, there was no time enough. So, the

situation is not ideal - some errors I made also while trying to train it and

the most effective period for training it is also gone.

It is one of the reasons I want to involve its nose in controlling it.

Another reason for this is that I live in the village among people and here we

have more or less active traffic. In this situation I'd like to have very

reliable and effective controlling agent.

I thought maybe rope instead ring would be the solution. Could you please

describe better this system? What is the material the rope is made of? How does

this system work? Does the rope fixed somehow (for instance I suppose that this

rope is like a part of the bridle fixed on ox's head) or is it just one long

rope with ends in the drover's hands?

I had constant personal contact with my ox. In general, I feel that we can

understand each other - he is clever guy, but I don't want to risk.

Ys Padmagarbha das

[Guest guest]

Regarding Nasal Harnessing.

 

Without getting into rings or ropes the Bhaktivedanta Manor Goshalla has

much experience of using ropes with nasal harnessing and driving oxen in

very congested and closed conditions.

 

1. Three or Four times each weak we drive 50 to 80 children (split into 3

groups) on an Ox wagon pulled by two oxen steered by nasal harnessing.

Because it involves school parties the control must be acurate and safe

especially for the children. The children and teachers regularly comment on

how well the oxen are driven and how manouvarable the ox wagon is.

 

2. The oxen have been used considerably on Padayatras around the country

where there is much traffic and public interaction. Nasal harnessing gives

extremely acurate driving possibilities.

 

3. Two times a year the Oxen are used for pulling a wagon on parades and

carnivals which involves streets packed with viewing pedestrians. The Wagon

has to drive through narrow spaces and be controlled even though there are

many passing public many of which are uneducated in the ways of an ox to the

degree that they may just walk up and try to stroke one. Some oxen do not

like being stroked by strangers and so in these circumsanaces there must be

precise control of the oxen from a position seated behind the oxen.

 

Nasal harnessing would seam to be ideal in the circumstances you have

described. Regarding training although it is recommended to train the oxen

young they can be trained easy enough at 3 years of age. As a practical

neccessity we do not train our oxen until they are strong enough to start

work which is at least 3 years old. Generally we train them more or less on

the job for example we would put a novice of a few days on a cart pulled

along with an experienced ox. This works very well.

 

Training Oxen with nasal harnessing is practically easy.

 

ys syamasundar dasa

Farm Manager

Bhaktivedanta Manor

Cow Protection Project

Watford. UK