Buffalo Dan's Bison

The bison seem to have calmed down quite a bit, though, the above picture is the best I've been able to get of them recently. In order to keep them here more permanently, I've resumed work of the 6.5 foot tall woven wire fence that I hope to eventually encircle the entire property with.  For this project I've divided the effort into three phases which represent different sections of the property.  The current section I am working on is probably a little over 1,000 feet and not directly accessible by any roads or fields.  This means I need to somehow transport all of the posts, wire, and tools into the area.  To assist me with this task I decided to go low-budget and build a hand cart from existing supplies.  The cart is approximately 4'x4' and initially used some bicycle tires I had from a worn-out bicycle I used when I was in graduate school.  Ultimately, after repeated flat tires and an eventual collapse of one of the tire rims, I did switch to solid rubber

I'm starting night shifts after the current break period, so I'm gradually staying up later at night and sleeping later into the day.  Now that we have bison on our property, working during the night time has become a little more complicated.  Like many mammals, bison appear to rely significantly on their ability to see potential threats.  I don't really know how well they can see in the dark, but I do know that they tend to find bright lights fairly distressing.  In particular, they seem to find headlamps very disturbing.  Last week I discovered this when I was walking along the fence-line during the evening hours.  It was getting very dark, so I put on my headlamp and turned it on.  I hadn't realized that the bison had been standing only twenty feet away watching me and when I turned on the headlamp they completely freaked out and ran away in a blind panic.  I found them to have a very similar reaction to vehicle headlights.  The bison don't seem to care about the

It's now their third day here and the ten six-month-old bison appear to have relaxed a little. They are not grouping as closely together and appear to be doing normal bison things. Thus far, normal bison things seem to be eating, pooping, sitting down to sleep, and occasionally enforcing the group pecking order.  When they see me, they reposition to a location uphill but still within sight. That's what they've done in the above photo.

The bison arrived yesterday afternoon just as the sun was about to disappear over the horizon. The deliverers positioned the trailer as close to the pond as we could get, so they could have water if they needed it. When the trailer doors came open the bison stood in the trailer for several minutes. They would move when they were ready, which was fine by us.  I'd rather they move on their own terms with less stress. Jess photographed the next few moments that led up to about an hour of chaos.  After few minutes of standing in the trailer, the first bison came bounding off.  This started a chain reaction with all of the other bison following one at a time.  You can the first bison on the far-right side of this photo. She has reached the electric fence and stopped to investigate it. Now the first bison has recognized the fence as a fence and started running along it toward the water.  So far, things are okay.  The rest of the bison are following her, though, the last ones out

I recently received the 10 Raspberry Pis I ordered from Newark Electronics a few weeks ago.  I needed a small inexpensive computer with very low power consumption, so, at a little over 30 dollars each, the Raspberry Pi is perfect.  Having previously used the Raspberry Pi to capture video from inside one of my beehives , I already have most of the system designed.  Currently, I am in the process of finishing work on the external system housing and constructing a power supply.  I will provide more updates as I progress in this project. 

While waiting for the bison delivery, I've been busying myself working on the remote monitoring system.  A major part of this project has been constructing the weather-proof, climate-controlled housing for the central system server.  All of the aluminum and pvc exterior have been completed and much of the interior insulation and air handling systems (i.e. pvc tubing with a fan and heating element) are installed.  One of the last touches I plan to add to this project is external camouflage.  After all, it is a surveillance system. To make the camouflage at least halfway decent, I did some research on the topic.  Among the plethora of academic and military documents I reviewed, I found the concepts of background matching (specifically color matching) and disruptive camouflage to be most useful in the sense that they were relatively simple and could be implemented systematically.  Given that I am completely inexpert in this very old and well developed field of study, I must apologi

Our trip out west went well and we've put money down on ten bison that should be delivered next month.  People keep asking me if I'm excited and, to be honest, I'm not.  From afar things might look very simple and straightforward. We bought the bison and its time to celebrate.  There are, however, still a lot of unknowns that could complicate this projected outcome.  I'm not going to go into this in any great detail, but I will say that the day they've been safely unloaded onto our pasture I will feel very happy.  If, a month later, they haven't jumped or destroyed my fencing and no one has tried to shoot or steal them, I will feel very relieved. A barred owl ( Strix varia ) perched on the electric fence in the early morning hours.  The pink strips of plastic hanging down below the owl are the plastic strips Jess had tied to the electric fence to warn people and animals of the new wire.  A week after Jess had tied them (three evenly-spaced strips between eac

Elections were held in the middle of my last break period so it wasn't worth spending all that time driving to the ranch only to come back a day or two later to vote.  I really hate it when I can't go down there, but it did give me a chance to work on some things at home. The first project I had was to replace the aluminum handle bars on my brush cutter with a steel one.  For most people the aluminum handles are probably fine, but I tend to be a little more rough with my cutter and have accidentally cracked the handles off a few times.  The first and second times I used my aluminum MIG welder to repair the aluminum handle tube.  However, although the weld on the handlebar seemed to hold, the tube continued to crack in the heat-affected areas of the tube.   After the third crack, I decided to fabricate my own steel replacement handles.  To do this I used a short piece of steel electrical conduit tubing I bought at the Home Depot. I would never recommend anyone else try using

This is the first blog post I've made directly from the ranch thanks to a mobile broadband device I just purchased for the surveillance network.  Once integrated into the network, the device will also have the dual purpose of providing us with internet access while we are staying in the scamp.  Eventually it will be placed in a weather proof outdoor housing and linked to wireless (wifi) router and raspberry pi server.  My target date for this is this winter, but we shall see how that goes.  Most of the programming for this system is done an all that remains is constructing the outdoor weather-proof housing and building a small photovoltaic system for the power supply.  

Came back early from my break because I've completely finished with the temporary bison fencing and gates and wanted to start working on the remote monitoring system. This system is going to be built using a wifi connected network of solar powered Raspberry Pi computers combined with video cameras and sensors controlled by Atmel microcontrollers.  The goal is to be able to remotely access this network using a mobile broadband device also solar powered.   Also, as promised in an earlier post, here are pictures from the ranch.  Temporary Gate One.  Both gates had to have an extension fabricated and attached because I miscalculated the necessary length.  The extensions were painted black and bolted to the gate frame.  Then wire was stretched over the full assembly.  Stretching the wire over the gate is a lot more work than it looks, but when you compare what I would pay for a gate of equal size and strength, it's worth it.  The second gate completed. 

I'm going down to the ranch tonight, but wanted to give an overview of what Jess and I have been doing over the last few weeks. During our previous time on the ranch, Jess and I were able to finish installing the three water-based fence posts that allow the bison to access the edge of our pond without wading in and filling it with poop.  I've heard from some people that bison won't do this the way cattle will, but I've heard from others that they will do it during hot weather.  This limited access gives me the chance to test which belief is true.  If it turns out that they like to stand in the water all day and poop in it, I'll fence off the pond and install a cattle water trough.  In addition to the pond fencing, we also finished upgrading the electric fence from a 0.5 joule energizer to a 3 joule energizer.  Though the 0.5 joule energizer was supposed to be able to adequately charge a fence like mine, it didn't.  The new system is very similar to the previ

The long pursued goal of completing the temporary electric fence has been realized.   The following pictures trace the full length of the fence from one side to the other.  One of two locations where the temporary electric fence meets up with the permanent woven-wire fence.  The fence as it moves south through the 800 foot corridor I cut through a forest area.  Jess tied all of the the bright colored pieces of plastic on the top line.  We hope that this might help wild animals and the future bison to see the fence and adjust to its presence.  It is also intended to reduce the possibility of any trespassers walking into the fence.  The fence emerging from the other side of the 800 foot corridor. A gate that allows vehicles to access the southern portion of the property. The freshly painted steel gate frame that will be hung from the braces in the previous photo.  A freshly pained t-post puller is propped up next to the gate on the right. More fence leading

This past break I only had two nights off, but I was able to get some more fencing work done.  The three water-based posts are nearly ready to be installed.  They consist of a horizontal tire base filled with concrete in which I can insert metal t-posts.  I could have just directly embedded the t-posts in the concrete, but I wanted to have the flexibility to be able to switch out the metal posts with fiberglass or other types of posts if necessary.  Jess and I collected the tires a few weeks ago along the part of our property that boarders a road.  I then welded some pieces of scrap steel to one end of three foot-and-a-half long square steel tubes.  During the last break, I laid each tire on its side and filled it with concrete.  Each tire took about three bags of Sakrete to fill.  Each time a tire was filled, I set one of the tubes in the concrete (scrap-steel-end down), so that the tube jutted upright out of the center of the tire.  I also pulled three five-foot metal t-posts out of

Working at night on the ranch has its ups and downs.  On the one hand, the temperature is much cooler and there are fewer distractions.  A cooler temperature is important because I am able to work longer without overheating and only being able to see the objects made visible by my headlamp tends to keep me more focused on the tasks at hand.  On the other hand, certain tasks, such as cutting trees, are much more difficult and sometimes dangerous and it's extremely lonely.  When my nights off fall on weekdays, such as this past break period, Jess is unable to join me, which makes things even worse.  During those breaks, each night seems longer than the one before and the darkness of the night begins to feel more enveloping.  It's in these times that I get the most work done, because working is how I cope with it. A cross-forest section of a part of the fence I finished last month.  At the time that I cleared this section using the brush cutter, the vines and brush we