Buffalo Dan's Bison

Yesterday, after much thought and research, I finally went ahead and purchased our first equipment trailer.  Over time, the need for such a trailer has become more and more apparent to the point that not having one would likely hinder the growth of the business.  If, down the road, we are able to lease additional pasture, we would need to have a way to transport the necessary tools (e.g. tractor, fencing equipment) to the property to prepare it for the bison.  Also, a major component of my ability to lease pasture will be a portable bison corral.  Unlike most corrals, which are massive permanent structures often assembled from things like railway ties and old oil pipe, this corral will be designed to be disassembled and moved.  I am currently in the process of designing this corral, which will incorporate the utility trailer.  It is also necessary to take the tractor into the shop for repairs periodically and there is always the random large item that needs unplanned moving.   I

  In some ways this post is an expansion on my last "big bison observation" post , regarding the flehmen response, but it does have enough new information to warrant a separate post.  To be honest, I've actually been somewhat hesitant to post on the subject of urinary pheromones given the potential to offend some readers, but the use of urinary pheromones by bison is such a prevalent behavior that it would be disingenuous for me to omit it. Consequently, when reading this post, I would suggest you judge it from a bison perspective rather than a human perspective.  For them sampling urine is a means of understanding important chemical signals associated with reproduction and is devoid of any of the complex symbolic meanings ascribed to it by human cultures.   The moment urination is observe our normally sluggish bull makes a beeline for the stream. In spite of my suggestion to readers to consider this behavior from a bison's perspective, I must admit that the f

One of a handful of gamagrass plants that germinated from the seed I planted this spring. The gamagrass seed I planted this past spring didn't turn out so well.  Out of the several acres of seed I planted, only about five plants can be found.  I suspect that I may have stratified the seeds at too cold a temperature.  Oh well there's always next year. The electric rope is much harder to rewind than unwind, so I've elected to make gasket coils rather than use the original spool it arrived on. A number of other species of lush sedges and grasses have grown up in a large portion of the planted area, so I've decided to remove the electrified rope surrounding the area and let the bison graze it.  

My new "digital" rain gauge just after installation.  The bison have gathered around to see what I was up to. Since becoming a rancher my interest in the weather has increased greatly and there isn't a day that goes by that I don't check the National Weather Service website for the local forecast.  However, when it comes to summer rainfall in southern Virginia, the local forecast and records aren't local enough.  Cloudbursts are relatively common during hot weather with several inches being dumped in the period of an hour.  Such storms can often be only a few miles in width and, therefore, will often not be recorded by the nearest official weather station.  For me, as someone dependent on plant growth, knowing how much rain has fallen on my pasture is useful for grazing management.  Taking measurements prior to installation. Thus far, the rather lofty price of fully electronic rain gauges outweighed the desire for rain data, but I was recently pag

Just got our portable bison squeeze chute.  A squeeze chute is essentially a large metal box designed to be able to hold large animals such as cattle, bison, and giraffes, without injuring them.  For the most part a squeeze chute is the only way you can safely do things like stitch up a horn gore injury, administer subcutaneous injections, take blood samples, inject RFIDs, or apply ear tags.  While it is not recommended for frequent use with bison, it is an important thing to have.  At some point I'll probably post photographs or a video of the chute in action.  In the meantime the following video does a pretty good job demonstrating the chute's features. 

Tomorrow will be the last day of treatment with the special chlortetracycline feed.  As the veterinarian said the feed is meant to stop the infection from spreading, which is what it appears to have done.  Unfortunately it appears that No. 8's left eye was too far gone by the time I started the treatment and will probably never return to a normal state.   In many ways I am relieved to be nearly done with the treatment, which has become a dangerous event.  Because their medicated feed is mixed in with sweet feed, they've become very fond of it and will immediately come running when they see the white truck pull up to the troughs.  Their normal routine has been to mill about while I fill the troughs, but this milling has moved closer and closer with each feeding until now they only keep about 15 feet away from me.  The moment I step away they then descend on the troughs in a frenzy.  If I had to keep this up much longer I fear it would result in injury to either me or another

Face flies beginning to appear a few days after my initial treatment with AiM-L VetCaps.  I unfortunately don't have any photos of the original mob of flies, which was much worse. Since the forth of July an insect called the face fly ( Musca autumnalis ) has plagued our ranch and caused me a considerable amount of stress.  It was a week ago, on the forth, while doing a routine check on the herd, that I noticed that the bison appeared to be greatly agitated by a surprisingly high number of the flies.  While the sight of flies or other small insects buzzing around grazing animals is nothing unusual, this was something different.  The flies flocked in groups around the eyes and nose of each animal so incessantly that the bisons' natural defenses appeared to be ineffective.  All the blinking, ear flapping, tail wagging, snorting, rolling in soil, and rubbing on trees had little effect.  No matter how many times they did these things the flies would just briefly fly up into the

The bull (largest horns on the left) leisurely sitting in the grass. The rest of the herd is starting to move away, but he'll stay sitting until he is ready to move.  As I believe I've mentioned in a previous post, bison have a minor mating season in early spring followed by a more intense season in late summer.  While humans should always be cautious around bison, they should be even more cautious during the mating seasons as bulls will respond to reason even less than normal.  I got my first taste of this in March of this year when I was charged on several occasions (see posts here and here ). The aggression the bull exhibited this past spring subsided about a month ago and he's now entered what I would term a "selfish mode."  Whereas before he would lavish his every attention on the females and valiantly defend them from every perceived threat, he now uses his large size and strength to be first in the line for anything desirable.  A good example of this

Installing fencing wire (barbed or smooth) is not as easy as it may seem.  Most fencing wire comes in minimum lengths of 1000 feet and wound in a coil that is two to three feet in diameter.  For 12.5 gauge (about 2.5mm thick) smooth wire, which is what I use, 1000 feet weighs about 25 lbs.  Unwinding 10 or 20 feet of this coil by simply pulling one end of the coil probably won't cause any problems, but, after that, bad things can happen.  Though straightened, the high tensile wire retains the twist of the coil much like a spring and, with each additional foot that is straightened, the wire has more stored energy and becomes prone to kinking, tangling, and sudden whip-like movements. The solution for the above stated problem is to mount the wire coil on a stand that can rotate as you unwind the coil.  This coil unwinder, sometimes referred to as a "spinning jenny," prevents the buildup of rotary tension allowing the user to unwind as much wire as he or she desires. I

June 30th marked one year since I resigned from my government career to pursue bison ranching full-time and its time for another assessment of my decision. Do I regret the decision to make such a radical change in my life course? No. Do I think it was the right thing for me to do? Yes. Is my life better now than before? Yes, definitely.   Is there anything I miss from my previous career?  Yes, I do miss many of the people I worked with over the years that I was there.  Though the bureaucracy was stifling, I was always able to find dedicated, intelligent people and will miss working with them.