What to do with your ox

The Ox Training Seminar at New Vraja Dhama, Hungary held April 17-24, involved training oxen by voice commands. Before the seminar, there were a few young oxen who were in the early stages of being trained by voice commands at New Vraja Dhama. Shiva was one of those oxen and Balabhadra (William E. Dove) showed how to train Shiva to stop and stand. Then seminar attendees took Shiva for a walk to practice Shiva’s stopping and standing. Watch the video and give student Shiva a grade in the YouTube comments below the video or take the poll in the video!

This 50-page handbook is now available in PDF file on our iscowp.org website. It has detailed instructions on how to train oxen who are older than Shiva. It also contains photos of oxen working the fields at Gita Nagari Farm (located in Pennsylvania, USA) back in the 1980s. How to make a yoke with photos and instructions is also within the booklet.

Organizing and maintaining a cow protection program is not easy. Most programs cannot exist on donations alone. Donations are often affected by the economy and are the first financial output to be stopped when life gets tough. For a cow protection program to be as self-sufficient as possible is a good idea. When the ox can help out by doing some chores around the farm that is one step towards self-sufficiency.