We are used to horses being shod for the protection of their feet. It is such a common thing that it hardly bears thinking about. Discarded horse shoes are, for some reason, regarded by some as symbols of good luck and even protection – some go as far as to say it is good luck to find one. This Horse Memorial at Weston Agricultural College in KwaZulu-Natal, dedicated to horses, mules and other animals that perished serving men in the Anglo-Boer War, is made up of horseshoes found in the area, where an estimated 30 000 horses and mules are believed to have been buried on the farmlands.
Less commonly known is the practice of shoeing oxen. This was particularly so for oxen required to draw wagons transporting goods or people. Such ox-wagons were the dominant mode of long-distance transport in South Africa over typically rough terrain before clearly marked roads or the railways existed and so, to protect the hooves of the trek oxen, special metal shoes were forged in two sections to accommodate the split hooves.
These ox shoes are also known as cues. Each animal would require eight of these crescent-shaped iron plates, fastened with nails. As you can tell from the photograph above, they were thin and broad to fit the hooves of the oxen. As a matter of interest, while we talk of shoeing a horse, I understand the term used in the context of oxen was to cue an ox – thus the person skilled in this would be known as an ox-cuer rather than a farrier. Being hand-forged, the ox shoes were shaped by a blacksmith.
Oxen used as draft animals or worked over hard ground were shod both to protect their hooves (hard surfaces could wear down the hooves faster than they could grow) and to provide traction. Nail holes are smaller than those used for horses as the hoof wall of oxen are thinner.
