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Zebu oxen in Mumbai, India Ploughing with Oxen by George H. Harvey, Nova Scotia, Canada, 1881 Oxen used for plowing, 2013 Boy on an ox-drawn cart in Niger Ox skull. An ox (pl.: oxen), also known as a bullock (in British, Australian, and Indian English), [1] is a large bovine, trained and used as a draft animal.
A plough or plow (both pronounced / p l aʊ /) is a farm tool for loosening or turning the soil before sowing seed or planting. [1] Ploughs were traditionally drawn by oxen and horses but modern ploughs are drawn by tractors. A plough may have a wooden, iron or steel frame with a blade attached to cut and loosen the soil.
It may have originated from the typical length of a mediaeval ox-goad. There are 4 rods in one chain. The furlong (meaning furrow length) was the distance a team of oxen could plough without resting. This was standardised to be exactly 40 rods or 10 chains. An acre was the amount of land tillable by one man behind one team of eight oxen in one day.
The yoke is held in position by straps, either alone or with a pair of wooden staves on either side of the ox's withers; the pull is however from the yoke itself, not from the staves. Withers yokes particularly suit zebu cattle, which have high humps on their withers. Withers yokes are widely used in Africa and India, where zebu cattle are common.
The original term comes from Ancient Greek: βουστροφηδόν, boustrophēdón, a composite of βοῦς, bous, "ox"; στροφή, strophḗ, "turn"; and the adverbial suffix - δόν, - dón, "like, in the manner of" – that is, "like the ox turns [while plowing]". [2] It is mostly seen in ancient manuscripts and other inscriptions.
Single-handled ox-drawn ard; Bronze Age rock carving, Bohuslän, Sweden. Evidence of its use in prehistory is sometimes found at archaeological sites where the long, shallow scratches (ard marks) it makes can be seen cutting into the subsoil. The ard first appears in the mid-Neolithic and is closely related to the domestication of cattle. It ...
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An ox-powered Copra press. Working draught animals may power fixed machinery using a treadmill and have been used throughout history to power a winch to raise water from a well. Turnspit dogs were formerly used to power roasting jacks for roasting meat.