The Mind of the Ox (and Pig, IMHO)

I finally found this photo I took at a 4-H Working Steer display at Fryeburg Fair (ME) in 2000. It is an excerpt from an article in the Small Farm Journal.

It is about oxen (working cattle), but I think that it equally applies to pigs:

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The intelligent and observant oxman is better situated than other cattle man, dairy man, rancher or feeder to observe the mental abilities of cattle. Indeed his success os an oxman is based in large part on his understanding of cattle psychology.

Often people only familiar with cattle in the dairy barn or the feed lot are surprised upon first seeing a yoke of oxen at work. The great British livestock writer William Yuoatt wrote, circa 1830:

"Cattle are like most other animals, the creatures of education and circumstance. We educate them to give us milk, and to acquire flesh and fat. There is not much intelligence required for these purposes ...

But when we press (the ox) into our immediate service -- when he draws our cart and plows our land -- he rapidly improves upon us; he is, in fact, altogether a different animal; when he receives a kind of culture at our hands, he seems to be enlightened with a ray of human reason, and warmed with a degree of human affection ..."

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OK - so it's pretty anthropocentric (human-centred) - and I disagree that it is adding "human-ness" to the animals that makes them suddenly seem more intelligent ... but I liked the idea that when we enter into a close relationship with an animal that we become most aware of its capacities and potential.