Bull update

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 behavior can be observed when the herd passes near a small patch of bare sandy soil.  Although bare sandy soil probably isn't very compelling for most humans (with the exception of beaches), in the mind of a bison laying down and rolling in bare dusty soil (called wallowing) is one of the more fulfilling things to do in life.  For this reason, whenever they are near a patch of sandy ground, they will usually take turns wallowing.  The bull, however, does not follow this tradition.  Rather than briefly wallowing and then moving so others can wallow too, he will lay down, wallow, and then go to sleep while the others look on.  After about twenty minutes or so our hero may wake up and decide to wallow some more, but he will not move for another bison.  Occasionally, one of the other bison may become impatient and jab him in the back with her horns, but he'll ignore her and only move when he is ready to move. 

While this new phase of behavior is probably annoying for the rest of the herd, it certainly is a relief for me as it allows me to work within the pasture area without constantly being run off.  This does not mean that he wouldn't hurt me if I got too close (I'll still never come closer than 200 yards unless I'm on the tractor), I simply no longer expect to be pursued whenever I'm spotted working in a distant part of the pasture.  I also need to keep in mind that this behavior is only temporary and I will soon find myself being ruthlessly pursued during the late summer mating period.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Front-end loader mounted t-post installer

Image
 Since we started fencing the perimeter of our ranch in 2014, I've strove to increase the rate at which I am able to fence an area.  Among the most recent improvements has been a t-post pusher which is mounted to our tractor's front-end loader bucket.  This device is very simple, but has already saved us countless hours of work. The following photographs illustrate how I use the post pusher.  Aiming: The loader is first positioned with the end of the pusher is close to the ground.  I then maneuver the tractor until the end of the pusher is in alignment with the marked post location.  This is how the lined up pusher looks from the driver's seat of the tractor.  Yes, I know the loader has an issue with the hydraulics cover. Loading:  Once the pusher is aligned, I place the tractor in park, raise the loader arm and insert a t-post into the open end of the pusher.  Tilting:  Correct placement of the t-post is dependent aligning the post along three axises,
Read more

DIY cultipacker-roller

Image
For those of you who are unfamiliar with agricultural equipment, a cultipacker is an implement used to compress soil.  There are several reasons a farmer may use a cultipacker, but, for me, the primary purpose for the cultipacker is to pack down soil that has just been planted with grass seed.  This should greatly improve seed germination in newly planted bison pasture. Five truck tire rims welded together form the shape of the cultipacker.  Technically this is really more of a cultipacker-roller hybrid as the ridged portions on the roller should be more closely spaced on a true cultipacker.  A thick piece of steel tube runs through the center of the rims, which I'll explain later in this post. For added weight each tire rim was filled with concrete after it was welded in place.  A photograph of the roller portion of the cultipacker completed and waiting for the concrete to cure.  The length of steel tube that runs through the center of the roller is welded to the
Read more

Face fly nightmare

Image
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
Read more