Well, that was one of the most interesting things I’ve ever done!

Tillers International, near Kalamazoo, Michigan, has the mission of teaching people in third world countries how to use oxen for power, especially to plow and cultivate crops.  Each year they teach the beginner’s course, “Oxen Basics,” to whomever signs up.  Our tuition goes to support the overseas programs.

I arrived and after the introduction, somehow ended up walking down into the fields and groups of barns and buildings by myself.  There was no one else in sight when Marcos came along.  Now, Marcos is a very old ox that they no longer use in the yoke, but he gets to live out his life on the property, which is extensive, and if June is a measure, quite full of good green feed.  Marcos is probably still about 2,000 pounds and he was tossing his head around.  I had no idea who or what he was and some part of my brain must have frozen up, because I don’t remember how I got by him; after all, he was using the road, and he was bigger than me.

The trick about training oxen is get ‘em when they are still small enough for you to be able to pull them around and push their hindquarters over and restrain them if need be.  We had training sessions with two calves twice a day. They were nice enough not to run off but it was easy to see that getting the hang of what we were asking them to do….walk forward, stop, turn…. was going to take much repetition.

I had been around horses when I was young so it was not hard for me to approach and groom the team that had been taken out of pasture and tied to the hitching post.  It is a very interesting proposition, though, to be squeezed between two sets of ox flanks.  I got in between them often to groom them, and often felt this.  In some ways it was not unappealing; oxen are not bony, there was very little likelihood of getting kicked in that position.  It was funny, really.  But to do the work, I needed to learn the commands to move over, and did, more or less.

Their heads with the horns was a different matter.  We were told the oxen, and cattle in general, always know the size of their horns and their position in space.  After all, they don’t want to poke any other cattle in the eye or anywhere else unless they plan it.  But they do use the horns when they are establishing dominance, and that means, possibly with you.  The whole goal is for me to establish dominance such that the oxen obey me.  This seems simple when the calves are little.  It is a bit of a mystery why they allow it, when they are 2000 pounds and well able to not comply with any command.  They aren’t like dogs, which do what the owner commands to please the owner.  Or do they?  Not.

Dominance while driving oxen is created by body position.  Temple Grandin’s book Working with Farm Animals shows on one graph that even tamed cattle still retain a “fight or flight” response to humans coming near them.  It’s this rather small edge of their fear of us that we use to be able to control their movements.  If we move closer while oxen are walking, they will walk away from us.  Once we move further out, they will simply move along.  That, along with a buggy whip and your voice, is all you have.  It feels strange.

It made me very nervous.  Most of the others in the class had experience with either driving horses or cattle, or with moving cattle around pastures, etc.  Upon reflection, days later, I think more of what was making me nervous and tiring me out was I have so little experience with expressing dominance.  If you have kids, you learn this.  If you have dogs, you learn this.  I had neither, not even a husband.  But, you give the command, flick the whip end in the right place, and the oxen move out.  Initially, they moved in quick step and I got plain old tired attempting to run up to get in front of them for some commands, and running along when I was giving them inappropriate commands and this was their response.

Later, you walk an acre field.  Dan told me that to picture an acre, think of a football field, all the way out to the farthest corners of end zone.  That is an acre.  Then picture the work, which is, basically, walking up and down the field, over and over.  Whew.  Then, the terrain.  Tiller’s has nice soil, you sink in a couple inches when you walk on it.  If you’re walking behind the plow, it’s hard to figure out if you should put one foot in the furrow and one foot on top, or walk all in the furrow or all on top…… sigh.  About half the class and the two teachers could keep going, on and on.  The rest of us watched and took a turn once in awhile.

One morning was hot and very humid and we were to work dragging downed trees.  I got most of the way to the trees and I had already reached my body heat tolerance.  It was not going to be cool in the trees, so I turned back.  It turned out that the biggest kerfuffle happened in there.  Carter the off ox (right hand side) got his belly full of stinging nettles and took off.  Percy the nigh (left hand side) ox wrapped himself around a tree (that’s what they said) but luckily it was a  sapling and broke.  The picture given was not pretty.  In such a situation, the drover calms the oxen,  organizes them out of the mess they are in, and walks them until they are calmed down and can work again, all of which was done.

This situation was a danger to the oxen.  We were given many examples of situations that were dangerous for the drovers.  One-eyed drovers; being dragged from having your foot stuck in a loop of the chain; backing up while giving the command to haw and having the load hit you, etc.  Rather ruins your fun.  I came away feeling that I might get skilled over time, but there were too many danger factors to have this ever be simple fun.

Nevertheless the animals are fascinating, amazingly tolerant of stupid first-time drovers, and I came to know why Mexicans call them “noble.”

Tillers International also teaches classes like blacksmithing and coopering.  Their web site is:

http://tillersinternational.org.