Anyone who has ever had the urge to play tug-of-war with an ox will get a chance to do so this year at the Butler Farm Show.

Doug Drewes will bring his prize-winning pair of oxen to the 2016 Butler Farm Show, which will run Aug. 8 through 13 at the Butler Farm Show Grounds.

Drewes of Juniata County will bring two of his three oxen, Atz and Yule, to the show.

“I hope to get people excited, get people involved, and get people educated,” he said.

Part of getting people involved will be a tug-of-war between one of the oxen and children.

“After I give my little presentation and demonstration I'm going to invite the children to come up and get on the end of the rope, because the old question in the book is, how strong is your ox?” Drewes said. “For someone to understand the tangibility of what strength is, there's no better play-out than to have a bunch of people hanging on a rope behind them to see if they can stop (an ox).”

The presentation will answer common questions people have about oxen, including how much they weigh, how big they get, how long they can be used.

Oxen are working cattle that are used as draft animals. Usually they are castrated bulls.

To give an indicator of their size, Drewes recalled a show he was at where the oxen were six feet tall at the hips.

“My wife calls them lazy elephants,” he said. “So these are big boys, they're gentle giants. They're very intimidating but they're so cool.”

The demonstration will include some of the things for which oxen are used.

“Oxen are trained to work,” he said. “They are trained to do various things like dragging logs, pulling carts.”

Drewes, who is originally from Lancaster County, has worked on farms for most of his life. He has a beef cattle farm and a flooring business, but didn't get into showing oxen until he met Abe Alenbach in 2013

At the time, Drewes was at a farm show to display one of his custom-built tractors; he's been dubbed “The Picasso of Tractor Restoration” by Lancaster Farming.

It was at that show that he met Alenbach, an elderly gentleman who was showing oxen.

“Here was this little old man with a pair of oxen,” Drewes said. “I thought, 'You got to be kidding me.' You look at these animals, they're huge. I'm thinking, 'How does he control these animals? Why aren't they running away?'”

Drewes befriended Alenbach, who showed him the ropes of showing oxen. Before long, Drewes had calves of his own, and not long after that, he was competing in the All American Dairy Exposition, a Pennsylvania farm show.

It was his first ever farm show, but Drewes and his oxen proved to be naturals; they won best match pair, a trophy and a check for $500.

“It was crazy awesome,” he said. “I called my wife and I said, 'Shirley, you're not going to believe what just happened.'”

Drewes has three calves of his own, rather than the typical two. The third is named “Lee.”

“If anything happened to one of the two that you had, you'll wish you would have had a third one,” he said.

Whether it's two or three, Drewes loves showing his oxen, continuing to educate, involve and excite fair audiences.

“I've always loved working with cattle, and never thought that you could work with them on a personal level,” he said. “The other thing I tell people is I'm not a very good golfer, so I chose this as a hobby.”