Our wonderful traditional Afrikaner cattle continue to delight visitors to the farm.
The photos below tell their own story.
Rare Breeds
The Afrikaners pull their weight
There seems to be no limit to what these stalwart beasts of burden can do. The weekly clean-up has now been extended to daily clean-up. The oxen work in pairs rotating every lunch time.
Their duties are general haulage of anything that needs to go from A to B. The full 12 oxen span will be working daily from Friday onwards to entertain the Kalahari Sunrise guests.
There are not many places left in South Africa where traditional Afrikaner oxen are bred, trained, and used.
Our breeding herd now consists of mature cows and calves with lots of young oxen developing steadily towards the point where they will join the working span. In fact, we are close to creating a second working span oxen.
Our pictures show the oxen at rest.
Update on Sandstone's oxen
10 November 2011
Our oxen continue to work hard for the farm. Here a number of them are doing the weekly rubbish collection. It is nice to think that we are not putting them in the hands of Middle East oil producers just because we need to remove our rubbish.
Sandstone purchases new Afrikaner Bull
Sandstone Estates has purchased a new Afrikaner bull from an excellent traditional Afrikaner blood line. This bull will sire a new generation of young oxen that will be trained to maintain the tradition at Sandstone Estates of using oxen in the traditional way to carry out various tasks on the farm.
Our breeding herd of Afrikaner oxen are great favourites at Sandstone Estates
Our breeding herd of Afrikaner oxen and indeed the oxen themselves are great favourites at Sandstone Estates. A recent visitor from Australia made this point in a recent e-mail to us:
Robert Hadlow [mailto:
Sent: 24 May 2011 06:58
Subject: OX-WAGONS.
As planned, Anne, my wife and I visited Sandstone and we wish to express our thanks for a very pleasant and memorable experience. Viewing your collection of wagons was particularly useful in educating myself of various forms of construction and style.
Our Afrikaner family... truly the pride and joy of Sandstone
Peter Webb sent in these pictures of our Afrikaner family... truly the pride and joy of Sandstone
The Sandstone oxen work for their living
Picture taken 4th April 2011.
Afrikaner Oxen update
15 June 2011
Despite the freezing conditions and the likelihood of snow our Afrikaners seem to be in good spirits.
Update on our Afrikaner cattle
The Eastern Free State winters are cold, very cold, so the oxen enjoy basking in the sun during the day. They have to be fed extremely well to help them cope with the sub zero temperatures at night.
