Rural Heritage June/July 2026

Seven weeks old and no leads for cart work.

to walk up and stand while being yoked? What if you gave up control of the animals to focus only on communication? Even if it’s only an academic question, take a minute to consider it. A team of oxen becomes most useful when they can be worked without a lead rope. Using cues from a halter, in many ways, slows down the learning. For instance, if the “whoa” command is given verbally and accompanied by a tap of the stick and the teamster stopping their feet, the animal learns that each of those cues means to stop. Add in a tug on the halter, and the animal has no choice but to stop. But did it learn to stop? Perhaps. Working without a halter or lead, even sporadically, accelerates the learning process for animal and teamster alike, provided the animals don’t run away into the next county. For this reason, training in an enclosed area makes good sense. Tillers has an excellent tech guide, Training Young Steers, that outlines round pen training. In this guide, Marcia Keith says, “Tillers International prefers the North American tradition of using only voice commands,

body language, and a crop or short stick. Working with lead ropes can be counterproductive to the teaching of voice commands as the animal and trainer may learn to depend on them. The training ring permits control without ropes.” Training a team to accept the yoke initially when they can simply walk off requires total focus and a willingness to accept the occasional setback, but it is possible, and a team trained this way becomes handy in a relatively short time. If you skipped to the end to see which method is the best, I hate to disappoint you. My standard rule of woodworking and oxen driving applies: Every task has six options. Two vie for “best” designation, two suffice in a pinch, and two may cause loss of life or limb. I’ve been happy training teams in each of the three methods: halter, collar, or untethered. In hindsight, the method matched the personality of the team, and I blurred the lines a bit within each method. In the final analysis, keeping a large set of training tools in your kit opens more possibilities in the moment. Both you and your team should benefit from that.

Rural Heritage

18