Medieval ploughing with Oxen, Green Valley

Clip from Tales from the Green Valley. Not quite medieval, but equipment and techniques were little changed in the early modern period. The BBC Farm team encounters difficulties ploughing with two oxen and a period plough. Slower than horses, oxen were better in some conditions: ““Oxen were slow, but when there was a need to overcome inertia, they pulled with a resolute and steady strength until things started to move again“ Horses, by comparison, relied upon a jerking action, which was often less effective. Horses require more attention than oxen, they must be curried, combed and rubbed down. Let oxen have their proper quantity of food and they require no other care. It is sufficient employment for a man to manage four or five horses, he will manage with equal ease double the amount of oxen. The shoeing of a horse is no inconsiderable expense, the expense of shoeing an oxen is a mere trifle. The power of a working horse is transmitted via a padded collar and body harness, but oxen achieved this via a heavy wooden collar or yoke, which fitted on top of the neck and in front of the shoulders. That yoke was then held in place by an ox-bow, which curved around under the beast’s neck. 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. As this improvement is obvious to the meanest capacity, one might expect to see every farmer greedily embracing it as he would a beast after being famished. Oxen usually worked in pairs and animals had to be carefully matched for size, strength and especially for height. Once a pair was selected they became each other’s companions for life, working side-by-side and never far apart whether grazing in meadows or sleeping in the ox barn. Each ox had a name and within the pair one had a single syllable name and one had a longer name. So Quick and Nimble, Pert and Lively, Hawk and Pheasant all spent their working lives together. Working cattle had to be shod and, since they had cloven hooves, that involved fitting two half-moon shaped iron shoes or “cues“ to each foot. It was the Enclosures Act of 1801, and with it the demise of a medieval open-fields approach to farming, that started a rapid decline in the use of oxen as beasts of burden. On the land a team of six or eight great beasts harnessed in pairs one behind the other was just too unwieldy to plough or harrow into corners of the new, smaller fields, but two or three horses harnessed side by side could do so with ease. Before long new-fangled steam traction engines were appearing on the scene, each with the power of a dozen horses or twice that number of oxen.“ See: Ox Logging Fitting and Using a Single Yoke “There was little attempt to change the design of the plough until the mid 1600’s with the Dutch being among the first in improving its shape.“ See: Location: