One man's quest to ranch American bison in Virginia.
A frustrated bison
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Our older herd bull (right) eating hay with No. 29 (left) and No. 28 (standing behind 29).
No. 29, one of our younger bulls, exhibited some interesting behavior the other day, which I though was worth mentioning. The following videos (greatly enlarged and cropped from the originals) were captured with a body camera I was wearing while walking past the bison herd. Usually, when I walk near the bison, they quickly recognize me and either ignore me or slowly walk over to see what I'm doing. In this instance I surprised them by approaching from a direction I normally wouldn't approach from and, for at least a short time, they didn't seem sure about who I was. When they are unsure if the human they've spotted is me, it's not unusual for them to act alarmed, but, as you will see, No. 29's behavior took things to a new level.
In the first video (above) you will see several female bison and calves on the right being chased by No. 29. Then, at around 0:08 in the video the chase moves across to the left side of the screen and, at 0:15, No. 29 stops and faces our older and larger herd bull who enters on the left a few seconds later. Just as the older bull becomes visible in the video, No. 29 now turns and dashes at a fast run after the main body of the herd to continue his chasing.
In the next video (above) we see No. 29 now energetically sparring with the older bull on the left while the rest of the herd stands around. The older and larger bull appears to be caught off-guard and stumbles some at first (a calf walking by in the foreground obscures the fight for a few seconds). Then, at about 0:13 in the video, No. 29 abruptly turns and hops off towards the rest of the herd and begins chasing the females again. The females circle about while the older bull appears to try to interdict No. 29.
Eventually, after I walked by, No. 29 and the rest of the herd settled down, but I'm still not sure what No. 29 was trying to do. My only guess is that No. 29 saw me (as an unidentified human) as a far greater threat to the herd than the other bison did and was trying, and failing, to get them to move away to a safer location.
A much smaller No. 29 (left) in January of 2016 with our older bull (front right).
At only two and a half years old No. 29 still has some growing to do before he'll be able to make a stand in a real fight with the older bull, but I've already noticed a more defiant attitude towards me. Rather than withdrawing with the rest of the females when I walk or drive by, No. 29 will more often than not stand his ground and sometimes do so with his tail partially raised in warning. He's also very attentive to the females whenever the older bull isn't. No. 29 has now joined the ranks of bison I watch very closely whenever I'm working in the pasture.
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,
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
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
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