Posted by Jerry/MT on March 12, 2012 at 09:38:08 from (206.183.116.145):
In Reply to: Anyone Raise Bison? posted by jim_in_the_west on March 12, 2012 at 06:21:15:
We have a few ranches that raise them and the National Bison Range is about 5 miles from our place as the crow flies.
Every Fall the National Bison Range works their herd and there are viewing stands for the public to watch. It"s a real eye opener if you are used to domesticated beef cattle. You might be able to find some pictures of this on youtube, etc.
Bison are wild and you can"t work them like regular cattle. I sold some hay to guy who raises them and he says he never handles his live ones and he harvests them by having hunters come onto his place to shoot them for a fee. He skins them and sends the carcass to a local butcher shop for processing. Our valley has more cattle then people and if he"s not vaccinnating his animals he runs the risk of having a disease outbreak that can spell big problems for any neighboring ranches.
From what I"ve seen of the buffalo meat market is it"s a special niche market that can command high prices when the supply is short. Several years ago there was a glut of buffalo on the market and they couldn"t give them away. Ted Turner is the biggest owner of bison in the US and he was bemoaning the fact that he didn"t have a market for his meat. (Big capatalist that he is, he even got Congress to approve buying bison burger for school lunch programs at inflated prices to help him out, but that"s another story!)
It"s hard enough to make a buck in the regular beef market without trying to raise a wild animal like a buffalo. The promoters are always out there telling you how much you can make (remember emus, ostriches, vincuna, llamas,etc etc) but there a few people who will eke out a living on bison and the rest will make a killing on convincing you to buy their high priced breeding stock. Don"t take my word for it. Go gather some facts and go visit a working buffalo ranch to see what it takes to properly raise buffalo. Look at the investment you"ll have to make in land and handling equipment just to be able to load them out as well as to handle them for routine vaccinations, (whch any responsible bison rancher should be doing). Do let the lure of "making a killing" raising bison cloud your judgement.
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