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Getting Started with Oxen

Start the calf as young as possible.

Training oxen is a simple and rewarding experience. Cattle are ready learners, and do not quickly forget what they have been taught. When their needs are met, oxen are patient, hard working draft animals, and will not balk at toiling at your side all day long.

The equipment needed to work with oxen is basic, and easy to use. The yoke can be inexpensively made with traditional woodworking hand tools. For more information about making or buying a yoke, click on: Neck Yokes, or Head Yokes. As an alternative to the yoke, a collar and harness may be used. For more information about harness and collar options, click on:
Harness and Collars.

Personal requirements are a willingness to spend the time needed to teach basic commands, patience, consistency, firmness, and responsibility in meeting the animal's needs.

Training oxen requires taking two separate animals, (selected for their similarities in temperament and willingness to work), which have previously been their own masters, and making them a team, that will work for another master. Behaving this way is contrary to nature. These animals have already learned many things before they began this training. It is your job to undo some of the things they have learned, and to teach many new things. Every time they are in the yoke they will learn something, either beneficial or unbeneficial. And they will challenge you as their new master, as they try to continue to meet their own needs and desires.

For more information on how to choose your calves, click on: Choosing Your Animals

Cattle are led by rules of who is boss. You must prove yourself worthy of being followed, of being a leader that oxen can trust, and who will provide them with their basic needs of food, rest, water, shelter, protection, and some social interaction. Training oxen is more than learning certain rules and applying them. It is a combination of what you know, achieving their acknowledgment that you are a good leader, being able to give correct body language, and being able to consistently give verbal and visual commands. The oxen must be able to respect you, and to accept you as leader. To train them through cause and affect, you need to know your animals, and to be able to control how their environment affects them.

Oxen will learn, they either learn bad habits or good ones. Make your team do everything you command them to. Never let them do something different than what you have ordered. Do not let them disobey or run away or do anything apart from what you have asked. Any time they misbehave, continue the lesson longer, even if you have to yoke them up again. Only allow them to stop, if they end up still willingly following your commands. They need to learn that when they are working, they are not in charge.

Cattle learn patterns and will soon know when you are almost finished a task, so change the pattern of what you do each day.

To be able to train cattle, you need to show your physical dominance, therefore it is better to start with animals young enough to enable you to easily do this. Once the animals have been taught this, they submit, and do not need to be constantly shown it again. This is why youngsters, who have trained their oxen as calves, are able to control their animals when they are much larger than themselves. Oxen must be trained to accept all people as completely dominant, and this dominance must be quickly established. It takes effort, planning, and skill to convince your cattle that you are never to be challenged, and in so doing, they will learn to respect you.

It is a vast difference in an oxen's normal lifestyle, for them to work for hours, under a human's direction. But oxen are content to do the same thing day after day as long as you meet their needs. Be careful not to overwork a young or out of shape team. Take care not to turn the team so sharply that their legs are rubbed raw on the pole or chain. Make sure the equipment you use on your animals fits them properly.

For more information on the care of your oxen's health, click on: Ox Health

Give your animals short simple names that don't rhyme with each other or with any of the commands. Use their names often. Make sure your body language matches your commands. Also make sure that you use your rod with self-control, but with enough force to get the action you are commanding. Speak your command before you use your rod. Always treat your animals with kindness and patience. Never work with your animals if you are in a bad mood.

Take the time to thoroughly teach your animals the basic commands, remembering that once the oxen learn something, they are slow to forget it. Teach them in short frequent lessons, being consistent in what you ask, and in the consequences for correct or incorrect behavior. Give praise and pats for correct behavior.

• A. Base for Training
  • 1. Respect gained through meeting your oxen's needs which are food, rest, water, shelter, social contact, and safety
  • 2. Leadership quickly and firmly established

• B. Rules of Training
  • 1. Train regularly
  • 2. Maintain control of both your oxen and yourself
  • 3. Be firm. Insist on obedience
  • 4. Be patient and understanding
  • 5. Be consistent in everything you ask

• C. Training Schedule
  • 1. Teach animals to lead
  • 2. Begin training with the yoke (or harness)
  • 3. Teach Whoa (Stop), Giddup (Go), and Easy (Slow down)
  • 4. Teach Gee (Turn right), Haw (Turn left), and Back (move in reverse)
  • 5. Begin to pull loads
  • 6. Teach Step In (step toward a pole/chain), and Step Out (step away from a pole/chain)
  • 7. Teach Head Up (lift heads when in yoke), and Come Boss (Come in from pasture)
  • 8. Use lead ropes as little as possible, until you can remove them altogether
  • 9. Work on giving animals a variety of tasks in a variety of environments
  • 10. End each work period when things are going well