Quote:
Originally posted by Kaltia:
Hmm, I think in a small space unkown to time 
hey, now I think about it, isn't an ox LIKE a cow? Enough for us city people to get confused?
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I always thought that they were a seperate species from what I call "cows" which are those things in the fields that you yell "Moo!" at when you drive through the country. I did some research and this is what I found, from Drew Conroy's book "The Oxen Handbook"
"Oxen are castrated bulls of the genus Bos that are 4 years old or older. Animals under 4 years old are referred to as working steers in New England."
So I guess an ox like a cow, only (a little bit) maler. Other interesting facts I picked up on my surf for knowledge:
"Modern domestic cattle evolved from a single early ancestor, the aurochs. It is believed the last surviving member of the species was killed by a poacher in 1627 on a hunting reserve near Warsaw, Poland."
Musk Oxen (Ovibos moschatus) are not oxen but a relative of antelopes and goats. “They’ve got the gut of a cow, or the gut of a classic grazer; they’ve got the eyes of a goat and they’ve got feet that look like snowshoes. So they are a very, very strange animal. And then they also produce wool."
For everything you didn't want to know about oxen, visit the MODA (Midwest Ox Drover's Association) home page at
http://my.execpc.com/~hiebj//index.html