Modern-day people don't know much about oxen, unless they refer to someone as a big ox or being strong as an ox. Some might know about Red River ox carts or maybe Babe the Blue Ox's statue in Bemidji.
However, oxen were useful for farmers in North Dakota's early days as draft animals, pulling stumps, loads of hay, and the heavy work of breaking new farmland with heavy plows. Although oxen were powerful and sure-footed, they were slow when compared to horses. Nevertheless, new settlers in Dakota often used oxen rather than horses because they were half the price of a good horse.
Moreover, oxen were cheaper to feed, eating only grass or hay, while horses also required oats. Plainly speaking, an ox was a steer, male calves castrated to make them tamer than a bull. Farmers trained young oxen early, just 6 months old, in order to get them accustomed to the work.
This gentle training began by fastening two of them together with a small neck yoke. By pulling a cart, they learned to work as a team. Ox trainers used a stick to tap an ox on the neck to teach it to turn, along with the voice commands of "gee" and "haw."
“Gee” meant turn right. “Haw” meant turn left. When the oxen were full grown, a larger and stronger yoke was used, generally made of oak.
Even without reins or mouth pits, an experienced farmer's oxen would go forward or back up by the farmer's gestures or stick waving or his well-timed grunt. If those communications failed, a light whip or ox goad, a club, brought obedience. If poverty brought tough times, the farmer could survive by fattening oxen into excellent beef.
On this date in 1921, the Grand Forks Herald looked back nostalgically upon the decades when faithful oxen had plowed much of the sod of the Red River Valley. By the 1920s, horses had made oxen obsolete, being better suited for all-around farm work due to greater speed and the ability to pull newer farm machinery. Oxen had been turned out to pasture, so to speak, and were rarely seen.
Still, there had been a time when oxen did the heavy pulling of the farm and did it well, receiving no coddling, no currying, and no grain rations.
Dakota Datebook written by Dr. Steve Hoffbeck
