In 1786 Washington recorded putting "a Collar on a large Bull in order to break him to the draft .-- at first he was sulky and restive but came to by degrees." The owner always aimed to have enough oxen broken so that none would have to be worked too hard, but he did not always succeed in his aim.

When they attained the age of eight years the oxen were usually fattened and killed for beef.
The management of the milk cows seems to have been very poor.

In May, 1793, we find the absent owner writing to his manager: "If for the sake of making a little butter (for which I shall get scarcely anything) my calves are starved, & die, it may be compared to stopping the spigot, and opening the faucit." Evidently the making of butter was almost totally discontinued, for in his last instructions, completed only a few days before his death, he wrote: "And It is hoped and will be expected, that more effectual measures will be pursued to make butter another year; for it is almost beyond belief, that from 101 Cows actually reported on a late enumeration of the Cattle, that I am obliged to _buy butter_ for the use of my family." In his later years he became somewhat interested in the best methods of feeding cattle and once suggested that the experiment be tried of fattening one bullock on potatoes, another on corn, and a third on a mixture of both, "keeping an exact account of the time they are fatting, and what is eaten of each, and of hay, by the different steers; that a judgment may be formed of the best and least expensive mode of stall feeding beef for market, or for my own use." During his early farming operations his swine probably differed little if at all from the razor-backs of his neighbors.

They ranged half wild in the woods in summer and he once expressed the opinion that fully half the pigs raised were stolen by the slaves, who loved roast pork fully as well as did their master.

In the fall the shoats were shut up to fatten.
More than a hundred were required each year to furnish meat for the people on the estate; the average weight was usually less than one hundred forty pounds.