When thinking of the way farming has evolved, it’s easy to assume that it all started with people tilling the land with hand tools, and from those primitive methods, we moved on to using working horses, and finally, we invented tractors with which to till the land. But this evolutionary ladder completely misses out one huge rung in the history of farming, namely the use of oxen. Oxen are beasts of burden that people have used for thousands of years, and which people still use today in developing countries. In Britain, oxen were used for a far longer period in history than horses, yet these beasts of burden are largely forgotten, and the part that they played in agriculture has almost become lost in the mists of time.
You may have heard of King Henry VIII and his six wives. What people generally don’t know about Henry is that, in 1535, he banned the breeding of ponies, as he wished to encourage the breeding of horses, in particular horses that were big and strong enough for farm work and were capable of carrying a large man into battle. The fact that this law came into existence tells us that large, heavy horses were scarce in Britain at the time, and that most of our equines were small and would have been relatively useless for farm work.
Henry’s breeding programme might have given us some slightly larger horses, but without the introduction of heavier breeds we still didn’t have draught horses as such. By the 17th century, however, draught horses were being brought over to Britain from Europe, but these were probably not established in large numbers, and it can be assumed that these were expensive animals that would probably have been reserved for important military purposes rather than for everyday agricultural use. It wasn’t until the 18th century that heavy horses were used for agriculture, and even then, these precious animals would only have been owned by the wealthier landowners, and the majority of farmers would have still have been using oxen for heavy farm work.
Horses, in short, were costly and expensive to keep because they ate a lot of the grain that farmers could have been using either for their own food, or as food for animals that could be fattened for food. The advantage that oxen had over horses was that they were much more affordable, and they could be bred from the cattle that the farmer already owned. It might be prudent here to point out that cattle and oxen are the same thing – it’s just that we tend to use the terms ox and oxen to describe a cows or bulls that work for a living.
Most working oxen were, in fact, bulls, because the cows were generally reserved for breeding calves. So when a farmer’s cow gave birth to a male calf, the farmer had two choices, he could either fatten the calf and eat it, or he could train it up, use it on the land, and then, after its working days were over it would be eaten. Only the biggest, strongest and most friendly bulls were trained to be working animals, but working oxen could be selected from pretty much any breed of cattle. Bulls that were quiet, amiable and strongly built were selected for farm work, and anything else was used for meat. Since oxen usually worked in pairs it was important to select a couple that were well matched in size and that had a similar way of going, so they would work well together.
It is said that a pair of oxen could do the work of one large draught horse, but they were much slower moving than horses. However, a team of oxen was often considered to be better at pulling a very heavy load at slow speeds than a horse, as their pull was steadier than that of a horse, and their cloven hooves were often able to dig in and grip better than a horse’s hooves, which are flatter underneath. Oxen are often described as being better at working “in low gear” than a horse, and there are old stories of oxen managing to pull loads that horses had been unable to shift.
Oxen almost always worked in pairs, and they are often seen in teams of four, six and eight. Hundreds of years ago, a large wealthy farm would have several pairs of oxen, partly because two oxen were required to do the work of one horse, but also because oxen are ruminants, and they must rest at some point during the day in order to chew the cud. Horses can work for longer periods because horses can stop, rest a while, be fed from a nosebag during breaks, and then resume their work. So although a farmer might require twice the number of oxen as horses to work his land, oxen were more affordable than horses, and they could be eaten at the end of their working lives.
Ox versus Horse
Oxen − Advantages
- Cheaper to buy than horses
- Will survive on poorer quality fodder
- Can be eaten at the end of their working lives
- Were rarely ill or lame
- Could be bred from almost any strong breed of cattle
- Were a good use of a male calf
Draught Horses – Advantages
- Faster workers
- Do not need to rest as frequently as oxen
Oxen – Disadvantages
- Slower moving than a horses
- Require more frequent rest periods than a horse
Draught Horses – Disadvantages
- Expensive to buy
- Require grain and good quality forage
- Become lame or ill more frequently
Henry Home – The Gentleman Farmer
By the 18th century, both heavy horses and oxen worked on the land, but working oxen were beginning to decline in numbers, and they were considered old-fashioned and slow in comparison to draught horses, and something that only the poorer farmers would own and use. Not everyone thought this way however – some people saw the rise in the popularity of working horses as something of a fashion, and a rather expensive and unnecessary fashion at that.
In 1776, a Scottish gentleman named Henry Home, who was also known as Lord Kames, wrote a book called The Gentleman Farmer. Home was not only a Lord, but he was also an advocate judge, a philosopher and an agricultural reformer, and in his book Home talks extensively on the benefits of oxen, arguing the case that when it came down to farm work oxen were far superior to horses. Home wrote: “There is not any other improvement that equals the using of oxen instead of horses. They are equally tractable and they are fed and maintained at much less expense.”
Home admits that when it comes to “galloping and trotting” the horse is, of course, superior, but he claims that as regards farm work the ox is far preferable to the horse:
“An ox is as tractable as a horse and as easily trained to a plough or a cart. I have seen a couple of them in a plough going on sweetly without a driver as a couple of horses, directed by the voice alone without a rein.”
Home felt that the trend for using horses for farm work was of little benefit to the farmer, and he suggests that farmers should continue to work oxen, because if nothing else an ox was far more economical to keep than a horse.
“An ox is cheaper than a horse so he is fed cheaper in proportion, he requires no corn and he works to perfection on cut grass in the summer and hay in the winter, he does well even out of oat straw.”
Home not only argues that oxen will eat far less of the farmer’s fodder than horses, but he also illustrates how much more affordable an ox is to buy than a horse, stating that “an ox worth seven pounds will perform as much solid work as a horse worth 14.”
Anyone who has ever kept horses will testify that there is a lot that can go wrong, a fact which Home is in agreement with: “A horse is liable to so many diseases that an ox is free from, if he happens to turn lame of which he is subjected from many accidents, he is rendered useless, where an ox can always be turned to account; if disabled from work he can be fattened for the shambles and sold for more than was paid for him.” (Note: “shambles” is an old word for slaughterhouse.)
From looking at the writings of Henry Home, it’s clear that, by the 18th century, oxen were falling into decline and were being gradually replaced by draught horses, a fact Home finds perplexing: “When the advantage of oxen for draught are so great, it cannot but appear strange that in Britain oxen have been almost totally been laid aside.”
Harnessing oxen
There are relatively few photographs of oxen working on the land, as back in the times when oxen were commonplace, cameras did not exist, and the photographs we see here were taken at the tail end of the period when oxen were still in use. The photographs we have in this article were kindly donated by two historians, Monty Larkin and David Rudwick, and when we study these photographs, which are all over a hundred years old, it is clear that oxen were harnessed and driven in quite a different way to horses.
Some oxen were fitted with yokes, some wore collars, some have headstalls, and some wear blinkers, just like we would expect to see on a driving horse, and some oxen have no bridles or headstalls at all, and they seem to wear nothing their heads. Headstalls, it seems, were not always necessary on an ox, because oxen were not generally driven with reins in the same way that horses were. Instead, they were driven by a person (or people) on foot, using long sticks known as poles, rods or goads to direct the animals left, right and forwards.
Henry Home explains that there are many different methods for harnessing oxen. Some people fit the yoke onto the horns of the ox, but Home claims that this hinders their movement, and it is better for the yoke to sit nearer the shoulder rather than on the horns or neck of the animal. Home maintained that often there is a lack of “proper furniture” when it comes to harnessing oxen. Oxen were usually horned, which meant that they could not wear a collar that slides on over the head like a horse’s collar, so the only way to fit a collar on an ox was to have a collar that would open and close. Home thought that using a collar so that the ox can push the load with his shoulders is a far superior idea of harnessing.
The end of an era
Gradually, the time came when the pace of life began to speed up; roads improved, and there became an increased need to shift goods around at faster speeds. This, combined with the pressure to increase farm productivity, meant that horses began to replace the working oxen. There was a long cross-over period where horses were used for faster work, but oxen continued to be used for slow work and for heavy haulage, but gradually their use fell into decline and, by the 1850s, the working ox was becoming a rare sight. When these photographs were taken, it would have been a real novelty to see a team of working oxen, which is probably why the photographers felt the need to record this dying tradition. By now, there is no one left alive who remembers the days when oxen were commonplace in agriculture, and we only have some old paintings of working oxen and these few photographs that depict these majestic creatures working the land. FC
Josephine Roberts lives on an old-fashioned smallholding in Snowdonia, North Wales, and has a passion for all things vintage. Email her at josiewales2021@aol.com
