page_title: Plough
section_title: Riding and multiple-furrow ploughs
hierarchical_section_title: Plough / History / Riding and multiple-furrow ploughs
caption_attribution_description: English: An old plough on a farm in northern Iowa, USA.
context_page_description: A plough or plow is a farm tool for loosening or turning the soil before sowing seed or planting. Ploughs were traditionally drawn by oxen and horses, but in modern farms are drawn by tractors. A plough may have a wooden, iron or steel frame, with a blade attached to cut and loosen the soil. It has been fundamental to farming for most of history. The earliest ploughs had no wheels, such a plough being known to the Romans as an aratrum. Celtic peoples first came to use wheeled ploughs in the Roman era.
  The prime purpose of ploughing is to turn over the uppermost soil, so bringing fresh nutrients to the surface, while burying weeds and crop remains to decay. Trenches cut by the plough are called furrows. In modern use, a ploughed field is normally left to dry and then harrowed before planting. Ploughing and cultivating soil evens the content of the upper 12 to 25 centimetres layer of soil, where most plant-feeder roots grow.
  Ploughs were initially powered by humans, but the use of farm animals was considerably more efficient. The earliest beasts used were oxen. Later horses and mules were used in many areas.
context_section_description: Early steel ploughs were walking ploughs, directed by a ploughman holding handles on either side of the plough. Steel ploughs were so much easier to draw through the soil that constant adjustment of the blade to deal with roots or clods was no longer necessary, as the plough could easily cut through them. So not long after that the first riding ploughs appeared, whose wheels kept the plough at an adjustable level above the ground, while the ploughman sat on a seat instead of walking. Direction was now controlled mostly through the draught team, with levers allowing fine adjustments. This led quickly to riding ploughs with multiple mould boards, which dramatically increased ploughing performance.
  A single draught horse can normally pull a single-furrow plough in clean light soil, but in heavier soils two horses are needed, one walking on the land and one in the furrow. Ploughs with two or more furrows call for more than two horses, and usually one or more have to walk on the ploughed sod, which is hard going for them and means they tread newly ploughed land down. It is usual to rest such horses every half-hour for about ten minutes.
  Heavy volcanic loam soils such as are found in New Zealand require the use of four heavy draught horses to pull a double-furrow plough. Where paddocks are more square than oblong, it is more economical to have horses four wide in harness than two-by-two ahead, so that one horse is always on the ploughed land (the sod). The limits of strength and endurance in horses made greater than two-furrow ploughs uneconomic to use on a farm.
  Amish farmers tend to use a team of about seven horses or mules when spring ploughing. As Amish farmers often cooperate on ploughing, teams are sometimes changed at noon. Using this method, about 10 acres (4.0 ha) can be ploughed per day in light soils and about 2 acres (0.81 ha) in heavy soils.
caption: Early tractor-drawn two-furrow plough.
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