Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 26, 1995 TAG: 9502270028
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-16 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: DONNA ALVIS-BANKS STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Long
"Just look at 'em," he says with great affection. "They're as sweet as they look."
Bucky and Jim are oxen. Together, they are two tons of thundering brawn, able to pull a 500-pound log behind them as if it were a toothpick. In fact, they can pull as much as 15,000 pounds before they give out.
"That's a lot," Bowers says.
Bowers, a lean 140-pound lumberjack-of-all-trades, is Bucky and Jim's owner. He purchased the team in Connecticut last month and hauled them to his 121/2-acre spread on Mount Tabor Road.
His friend and neighbor, Randy Howard, plopped down the money for a log truck and the two men decided to go into business together. Their dream is to build what they call an "environmental logging" operation in the New River Valley.
It is not, they insist, an oxymoronic idea.
Pun intended, they are convinced that Bucky and Jim hold the key to the future.
"This is the power force of the future, not the past," explained Bowers as he rubbed Bucky's thick black coat. "These guys are way more efficient than any tractor.
"They can work between the trees, so we're able to select the lumber we want to cut," he went on. "You don't have to tear down a whole stand of timber."
Plus, Bowers added, "these guys are real quiet. That's a definite asset when you're working them in the woods."
Howard said he believes there's a local need for this kind of logging.
"We would like to have people who are interested in protecting their lands and preserving the environment," he said. "Those are the people we want to talk to."
"We can't go head-to-head with commercial loggers," Bowers acknowledged. "It's not a high-volume business. It's high-quality."
"If we had a decent timber lot, we could pull out 1,000 board feet an hour," Howard said.
Bowers, 40, and Howard, 34, were raised on farms. Bowers grew up in Maryland and Howard was reared in Vermont where oxen aren't an unusual sight on rural roads.
"My grandmother had her own team of oxen," Howard said. "I always grew up with horses, cattle and working animals."
"When you're working with animals, you have to enjoy your work," added Bowers. "You develop quite a relationship with them."
Bowers, who has trained saddle horses and draft horses, first tried logging 15 years ago in Colorado with a horse and a mule. He moved to Colorado "for some Western culture," he said, and it was in the Centennial State that he discovered oxen.
"Bucky and Jim are the fifth pair of oxen I've owned," he said. "I always liked them. They're really mellow and pleasant. It's relaxing working with them."
Oxen, incidentally, are cattle - or is it the other way around?
They are members of the bovine family, along with bison, yak and water buffalo. All bovines have long tails, cloven (divided) hooves and heavy bodies.
Chianina oxen, a gigantic white Italian breed, can weigh as much as 3,500 pounds each. Legend has it that the Romans used them to pull cannons in ancient times.
Bucky and Jim aren't so exotic. They're plain old American-born Holsteins.
Oxen are neither a special breed of cattle nor hybrid animals such as the mule, a cross between a donkey and a horse.
And oxen are not born. They are made.
"Any of these steers could be made into oxen," noted Bowers, gesturing to a field where cattle grazed near the new barn he built for Bucky and Jim.
"But," he added, "it's not in the culture here."
A male calf, called a "bull calf," will become a veal calf, a steer, a bull or an ox. A bull calf is an uncastrated male; a steer is a castrated male.
Few Holstein steers "live past their second birthday because 99.9 percent are grown for food. They end up at McDonald's," Bowers said.
"These are lucky oxen," he added, patting the thick horn above Bucky's left ear.
"Bucky and Jim will live to be in their mid- to late-teens. If it wasn't for them being able to work, they wouldn't be here. They would be canned."
Bucky and Jim are nearly 5 years old. When they were calves, Bowers said they were "broke to work." That means they were trained from the onset to become laborers.
Oxen are trained to follow only four or five simple commands.
When Bowers or Howard wants to start the team, they say, "Come up." To steer the team right, the command is "gee" and to make the oxen turn left, it's "haw."
"Whoa," Bowers says softly but firmly when he wants the team to stop.
"Sometimes you have to tell 'em, 'Get off my foot!'" he grinned.
Bucky and Jim weigh about 2,000 pounds each, but they each eat only one 60-pound bale of hay per day.
Bowers and Howard figure they're worth their keep.
"They don't eat as much as a pair of horses that weigh the same," Bowers said. "They can convert food to energy more efficiently because of their four-chamber stomachs, and they can eat a rougher grade of feed."
"These guys run on solar power. They're easy on fuel," he continued. "They don't hurt the ozone except when they burp. They give off methane.
"They do a lot of that," he admitted.
Bowers said there are other advantages to using ox power over horse power. Oxen work well in rough terrain because they don't try to force their way through obstacles as horses do. They're slower than horses but they're steadfast. Their cloven hooves also give them better traction on wet ground.
Oxen are not high-strung animals, either.
"On the Oregon Trail, folks would sling a hammock for their kids on the oxen," Bowers noted.
"They don't tear up whatever they're hooked to, so the machinery lasts a lot longer, too," he added. To drive a team of oxen, the farmer doesn't need reins, a harness or anything that binds him to the animals. He simply walks alongside the team carrying a small prodder.
A yoke fits around their necks. That's one reason the horns are not removed from oxen.
"Horns keep the yoke on and it's traditional for oxen to have horns," said Bowers. "Horns are usually removed from steers so the farmer can make more space in feed lots."
Bowers said oxen even have different personalities.
"Bucky is the lead ox," he said. "He's just a little smarter than Jim. He watches me. Jim watches Bucky more than me. He's a little more playful."
Bucky certainly doesn't merit the description "dumb as an ox."
"If there are two piles of hay, Bucky will always get the one he wants," Bowers noted.
Bowers and Howard say they're optimistic about making a living with their local environmental logging business.
"We don't plan on retiring in two years," Bowers said.
Bucky and Jim chewed their cuds contentedly as if affirming the Prophet Isaiah's axiom: "The ox knoweth his owner."
Bucky and Jim don't plan on retiring any time soon, either.
Bowers and Howard call their new company Field and Forest Improvement. For information on the services they offer, call them at 230-2820.
by CNB