Packwaukee, WI - The farm looks like most others in central Wisconsin, except for the big, shaggy buffalo bulls grazing contentedly on a wooded hillside next to the barn.
Then there's the huge, ornamental steel gate -- built for something much bigger than most farm stock -- that guards the entrance to BisonRidge Ranch and Leather Co.
Instead of Holsteins or Guernseys, this farm is home to a herd of 105 American buffalo, plus a healthy batch of calves born this spring.
The calving had started when a cold front arrived this spring and the pregnant buffalo “held their calves” until better weather, says Georgia Derrick, who runs the ranch with her husband, James Atten.
That's one of many ways the bison, a native species of North America, differs from domestic cattle.
Another is the low fat and cholesterol in the meat. With the industry on the upswing, bison meat is available in many restaurants and grocery stores, especially in areas near major buffalo ranches and processing plants.
Nationwide, the bison population that was almost wiped out by hunters a century ago has climbed to 250,000, in herds ranging up to the thousands on western ranches of media mogul Ted Turner.
In Wisconsin, about 100 producers raise some 5,000 head of bison.
Derrick, formerly of Denver, met her husband at a bison convention in 1987. She had a leather business and was making bison products; Atten had five bison on his Wisconsin farm. He now splits time between the ranch and his real- estate business in the Chicago area.
They sell some buffalo meat but focus mostly on raising bison as breeding stock.
They've expanded the farm near Buffalo Lake to nearly 1,000 acres and are switching fields that once grew corn and other crops to grasses that can best feed bison.
They want to create a rotational grazing system, using the buffalo's natural habits of moving from place to place to feed -- but within a network of permanent and portable fencing.
“We're headed to sustainable pasture, with a lot of refuges for wildlife,” Derrick says. “We want to raise our animals in harmony with the others.”
Meat Industry Insights News Service
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