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When Bill first moved to the ranch,
he started breeding buffalo for seed stock, and also marketing the
meat. A few years back, the market dropped drastically and a lot
of people went out of the business. Bill just sold a bunch off and
kept what he wanted for his own personal meat. We currently only
have 18 head - 9 cows, a 3 yr. old bull, and two year olds and
yearlings.
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We don't
really do much with our buffalo. They are truly wild animals. We don't handle them much because the
are so hard to work. We worm and vaccinate once a year in the fall and we
usually cull the ones we are going to eat at that time. If we have any of
butchering size, and someone wants to purchase one, we will usually sell it. Normally
when someone buys a buffalo, they come out and shoot it on the ranch, and skin
and dress it out here. Then we load it onto their truck, and off it goes to the
butcher. People rarely have the means to transport a buffalo so that is why
they do it this way.
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The buffalo are very different
from cattle. They
have to be trained to be worked. Cutting horse trainers love them because
they don't need to rotate as often, and they are so hardy, they rarely get
sick. They are quick on their feet and challenge the horses better then
cattle do. However, you have to have the proper facilities for them, or else you've got
problems. If a buffalo can see daylight through a fence, he will chance it.
We have 10 strand barb wire fencing, and they can go through that if they
really wanted too. So we don't work our horses on the buffalo but they are
exposed to them. We ride the fences and allow the horses to become use to
the strange creatures that buffalo are. They are fun to look at, but at times, it would be nice if we
just had cattle instead.
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