When one thinks of Ontario’s settlement era, images of horses plowing rocky fields or pulling sleighs piled high with logs immediately come to mind. Yet, when the first settlers came to Bradford in the early 19th century, most would have arrived atop wagons pulled by plodding oxen.
Oxen were favoured by early settlers because they had several advantages over horses.
First, oxen were far cheaper to purchase, an important consideration because many settlers had little in the way of money.
Additionally, oxen could survive on a diet of wild grasses and foliage. Beaver hay, a coarse grass that grows wild in marshlands, was particularly plentiful to Bradford settlers because of the Holland Marsh. Food for oxen, in other words, was easy to come by. Horses, on the other hand, are far more discriminating, requiring domestic grasses and grain in the form of oats or barley for a healthy diet. This was a problem until such time as settlers had cleared fields for pasture and cultivating grain.
Oxen are also more powerful than horses. Under a heavy load, an ox will tug and twist, using the leverage of the tongue to good advantage, notably when plowing in difficult fields. Horses are more inclined to throw their whole weight into the collar in a lunging fashion.
In addition, an ox’s two toes are better adapted to slippery conditions, such as boggy ground and snow, than are the hooves of horses. As a result, oxen are less likely to fatigue over long journeys or due to heavy workload.
Finally, oxen are not as skittish as horses and less likely to run away when startled. Even if they did flee, their plodding gait meant owners could easily corral them.
As a result of these advantages, many of the earliest farms in Bradford would have been broken by the strength and endurance of oxen.
Horses eventually eclipsed oxen and became commonplace on area farms, but even then, oxen remained in use by logging companies to break sleigh roads through the woods. To allow horses to pull sleighs piled high with logs, the roads needed to be frozen solid. Getting ground to freeze requires breaking the ground of insulating snow, a task oxen excelled at.
By the late 19th century, the oxen had had their day, but old timers continued to look fondly at the beasts, whose strength and endurance had helped them establish their farmsteads.
