New bison ranchers needed

When I was a child a buffalo at the zoo we used to go to, killed it's keeper.
We were at Yellowstone once when a man was thrown across the parking lot when he tried to "shoo" a buffalo away from his car. He was not seriously injured (incredibly).
I'm not sure why my neighbors buffalo are so docile and don't go through that lame excuse for a fence, but he's had them since 1972 so he must be doing something right.

A shortage of bison? Oh, no, there will be food riots!!!!



geo

I think people have latched onto bison as one of few grass raised untainted meats left in the market. But if demand continues, well it will go the way of beef, chicken, pork, etc, and they will try to maximize profit to nth degree at great cost to quality. In other words they will Tyson-ize it and it will be garbage just like current mainstream domestic meats.

You cant even import good beef anymore. Argentine beef used to be high quality, now they are finding it more profitable to do it the USA way with confinement feedlots and cheap quality petrol-grain along with mega drugs.

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"What would you do with a brain if you had one?" -Dorothy

"Well, then ignore what I have to say and go with what works for you." -Eliot Coleman

A guy started a beefalo farm in central NJ, in the 1970's. His place was surrounded by sod farms and the Delaware and Raritan Canal. I ate some back then, and it tasted great (wild). Don't know if his farm is still operating, or what kind of fencing he had. It was next to some very busy commuting roads. ldc

Might be interesting trying to convince the bison to go along with the plan unless they can somehow gene-engineer more "domestic" into them. I can see a Tyson bison farm being a very interesting place to work!

PERFECT for YaksMas!



I miss Ren and Stimpy...

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Je ne suis pas Alice

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Ted Turner has a bison ranch south of Bozeman MT, they were continually out and you really had to watch at night. They were quite a number of them hit at night and the auto owner had to pay for them since it was open range.

Bob

I tried bison while living in Montana, and I gotta tell you it is so much better tasting than beef, at least to me. It is denser and has a great flavor.
I always went to the ranch to get my bison. It was a large ranch and the fences were huge.

Now that I have remlocated back to the east, I still use bison as my only red meat. I don't think I could ever eat beef again.

If you haven't tried it, do, please. Start with the ground and cook it as a hamburger but not as long. Do not eat it rare.

I love it.

Most animals are content with hanging around as long as they have lots of good food and water until breeding hormones kick in and stir things up.

I remember reading about some shyster in ND (I think) who had 50 tons of processed buffalo meat in a freezer. His business went down the tubes, the electricity to the freezers was cut off and he walked away. They had to wear hazmat suits to clean out all the spoiled meat.

I was partially right. It was buffalo.

http://silencedmajority.blogs.com/si...p-sd-town.html

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"Do you believe in the devil? You know, a supreme evil being dedicated to the temptation, corruption, and destruction of man?" Hobbs
"I'm not sure that man needs the help." Calvin

Why would you not eat it rare? That's the recommended way to eat it.

There was a buffalo/bison herd on the Crow reservation and for several of the get-togethers they had there they killed one and had it BBQd ... very good meat.

Funny.. My son just called last week and said he tasted a buffalo-burger and wanted me to raise him one. I told him to get his own field. Nice thought, but I take about 20 more years to get used to my cows, thank you.

We can buy it locally here. There's also a farm in the Dakotas that sells it. The meat tastes very good and it's lean.

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"Do you believe in the devil? You know, a supreme evil being dedicated to the temptation, corruption, and destruction of man?" Hobbs
"I'm not sure that man needs the help." Calvin

By that time, Tyson will just be cloning animal body parts (any kind you want) in a factory someplace, probably China..... No real living breathing animals involved, just their parts growing in a test tube....

Those factory farm chickens by way are pathetic critters up close and personal. More profitable to breed them like they do, but should be considered animal cruelty.

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"What would you do with a brain if you had one?" -Dorothy

"Well, then ignore what I have to say and go with what works for you." -Eliot Coleman

I just don't like rare meat, that's all.
My father would eat steak tar tar and maybe that started it all!

Most buffalo nowdays aren't purebred. Lots of them have tiny bit of cow dna in them. They had to DNA profile some of them in order to put them back in the wild in some areas. Not sure where....

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Ted H

You may all go to Hell, and I will go to Texas.
-Davy Crockett

That was really, really dumb...
We used to work on a 6,000 head buffalo ranch on the ND/SD border. DH was the herd manager. I saw a lot of wild things in the years we were up there.

A mama cow on the fight took DH's 1ton diesel pickup. She hooked a horn in the homemade grill guard, picked it up, shook it and dropped it. Three times in a row.

Another time, there was a cow that refused to stay in. So DH and one of the guys went out to shoot her. Norvin shot an SKS right through the center of her skull. It blew her horn off the other side and she just walked away!!

We moved them with snowmobiles or 4wheelers and pickups, depending on the season. Despite the fact that the cattle side of the ranch was a horseback outfit, you'd have to a be a bloomin' fool to work buffalo on horseback. At least not without a vehicle directly behind you for back up.

They turn on a dime and will take a horse and rider down faster than you can blink.

Corral work was done with a bidirectional tractor. Which had a hole stabbed in a tire once by a buffalo that didn't WANT to go that direction, thank-you. lol

Part of the place we were on was actually purchased from the widow of a man who was accidentally killed by a "tame" buffalo.
It shook his head at him while running through a gate and caught him with a horn right above the belt buckle. Ripped open his ribcage, all the way up to his collarbone.
I never met Cal, but his widow Gert was the sweetest lady you could ever want to meet. Apparently she held him together, literally, wrapped in a blanket until the EMTs hauled him to the hospital...


I would never recommend someone get into buffalo unless they do a LOT of research. Including a year or two of work on an operating ranch...

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~*~Erin~*~
SAHM, ranch wife, sub and quilt shop proprietress
the Back Gate Country Quilt Shop

Gotcha. I can't stand the idea of sushi either.
Great name by the way..it's my daughter's name too!

I am curious if the ones that have noted smaller fencing and such, if they aren't Beefalo's? I really don't have any experience with either, it's just we have ranch's around here with Beefalo's and my co-leader for 4-H raises them as well, they just graze with her beef herd with standard fencing, I'll have to ask her about them but it was my impression that they are easier to handle then Bison/Buffalo?

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Idleness is leisure gone to seed

Erin - Yes, You are right.
I did not explain it well. I did not herd the Buffalo on the horse in the pasture.... I rode along the roadway on the outside of huge steel fences, while the trucks (4) were actually doing the work. I got out of the truck early on, as I could tell where that was going. I felt far safer where I was, than in the pastures with them. They sure will shake a truck and turn it over in a heartbeat! You are EXACTLY right. Those things are
dangerous, if you get in their way. They ain't scared of you!! Like I said, they will double dog dare you and make you believe it

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