New bison ranchers needed

Catahoula dogs have been found to be one of the rare dog breeds that can actually herd them. Technically they're pretty much head dogs whose sole duty is to stop action and you are the one responsible to push the herd from behind.

As for sushi, it tastes quite good if you know what you're eating and whether it's good sushi. There are vegan sushi, cooked sushi (yes, there is such a thing as that!), fish or meat based sushi. There are some sushi that has dips to go with it. Best thing is to eat at a nice restaurant manned by a very experienced chef. Best to start with cooked sushi and go from there. Eel is something that I don't recommend to try on a first time basis.

I prefer steak rare....tastes better than the well-done ones which have had charcoal marks (cancer causing agents are in the black marks) burned in them. Tastes like crap to me.

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Ted H

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

The ones up the road from me are pure bison. When I went out today I noticed that there is actually 4 wires and it looks like one of them is hot.

Most of ours were fenced in with nothing but four foot high woven wire with two strands of barbed wire above it. The whole thing was about 5 and a half feet high but none of the wire was hot.
The herd bulls, on the other hand, were fenced with six strands of hot fence.

Even so, when a buffalo wants out, they get out.
In autumn, for example, it was really hard to keep them in. They would always try to go west when winter was coming.
Migrating to the mountains is all we could ever come up with.

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

Oh good.
I won't question your sanity anymore.

In the 70's a farmer in Jefferson, WI bought about 30 buffalo. He brought them home, put them in his pasture and they just kept going. This was an area of very nice dairy farms--and the neighbors did not want beefalo calves. They also liked their fences. After several days of trying to round up the buffalo with everything they could think of including helicopters they asked anyone that wanted one to come and shoot it. Expensive lesson learned!

Don't have a Bison ranch near me but there's a rancher nearyby that has a few Water Buffalo's. Supposedly Water Buffalo's are the next big thing to be buying and selling.

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r.h. in oklahoma

Raised a country boy, and will die a country boy.

Since we seem to have a lot of Beefalo's around here, I was kind of wondering how much bigger real Bison would be. I might have to google that, the Beefalo's that I've seen around here aren't so much bigger then the beef, of course I've never been up close and personal with them!

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Idleness is leisure gone to seed

Purebred bison are huge! I stood next to the wired fence on the ranch were I got my meat, and that thing was large! Just looking at the size of their heads is scary.

I was driving through Yellowstone one year and the bison like to walk alongside the narrow road the cars use. The bison pretty much just walk along and ignore the tourists (smart, aren;t they?) well, I reached my arm out and patted one on the rump as I drove by---the fastest you can go is usuall 5-10 mph.

Now for a completely new topic----has anyone ever had a wolf hybrid for any reason? I have had two.....story later.

A few pics from my trip through Yellowstone in Feb 2008:


Pardon me, comin' thru!


and this was a little guy compared to some I saw


By the way, you do NOT argue right of way with a bison

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I am the daughter of Earth and Water,
And the nursling of the Sky;
I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores;
I change, but I cannot die.
The Cloud
Percy Bysshe Shelley

Did you work for Mimi Hillenbrand? I used to work for her dad Ray on their estate in Northern Wisconsin...great GREAT people!!

Nope. The owner is a Florida investor.


Re: the question of size, I was trying to track down a photo I have of some of the herd bulls next to an old barn that was out in their pasture. Couldn't find it but I see dragon posted a couple to show size.
While I was hunting I found these two though. These were just-weaned calves:

and these were replacement heifers. Yearlings.

They lived across the road from our house and my morning run always took me along their northern fenceline for a mile. They'd run along with me to the next fenceline and then run along with me when I'd come back.
It was unnerving. lol

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

I've had it several times, while in Alaska. It was ok, but not the tenderest morsel I've ever had.

If I ever got to hunt a wild one, I'd eat the liver raw, and probably some of the hump.

I get nostalgic, daydreaming about the fact that bison used to migrate through this area, in the fall, fattening up on the mast crops. (live in the deep woods, not on the plains)

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Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. Seneca
Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival. W. Edwards Deming

Lisa,

There is probably wacky tobacky growing in the pasture that has only a regular fence. The critters are very mellow.

There is a boulder in the praire where I hunt pheasants. It is the only rock for miles arround. One side is polished as smooth as glass by the bison using it as a scratching post in the old days. I expect they can go through any fence they have a mind to.

my neighbor down the road raises bison. He uses highway steel fencing, its a rolled type heavy duty fence. Works on semis and bisons. He also raises beefalo....and its tasty! Flighty creatures, not like the normal beef cattle - edgy and ready to stampede on a moments notice.

Cool pics! They really don't look much like the Beefalo's....those look basically just like they are, a cross between the two, and no, not that big! I'll have to take a picture of a field with a mixture of Beef and Beefalo's.

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Idleness is leisure gone to seed

Yes, they are behemoth. But, they are tasty!

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"We are the people, our parents warned us about." - Jimmy Buffett

I just snapped a picture on the way home. Most of the buffalo were way off in the woods sheltering from the snowstorm but there were a couple younger ones near the road. I misremembered the fence. It's t-posts and 4 hot wires.
It sure doesn't look like it would hold back a lot of buffalo but it does.

I read about some people (professors?) who were interested in restoring a buffalo economy to the Dakota region by restoring prairie and raising buffalo.

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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

A farmer near the elementary school I attended raised buffalo. IIRC he had t-posts and telephone pole posts and 4 hot wires. It kept the cows in but not the bull. The bull was huge, it once tried to get on my sisters bus but got stuck at the shoulders. It got nasty as it got older and ended up killing the owner.

There's a buffalo farm close to where we live now. I never paid much attention to the fencing. They don't keep the bull with the herd. He gets out for a month or so of "fun" then goes back in his specially made pen.

The local park system wants to reintroduce bison to Ohio. I wonder how long it will be before one gets out of their "pasture".