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Across the Fence by Bill Rinehart Research Project and Herd Numbers |
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Subject production site consisted of approximately two acres that were severely contaminated by a brine spill in February, 1995. The site remained devoid of vegetation for three years after the spill and parts of the site were visibly eroded. Since then, the TU supervised combination of chemical treatments, salt removal, and prairie hay to stop erosion, worked. This small, remediated area is part of the 3,905 acres recently added to the bison unit and soon after the area was opened up to the bison, about 90% of them went there and started pushing around the left-over round bales of prairie hay used in the remediation project. The acreage was all spring burned last year and had cattle on it until mid-summer. The bison, then, had high quality grass to eat. That, plus their natural inclination to check out something new, explains their immediate attraction to this area newly opened to bison grazing. A number of OSU students have been working with Dr. Jim Shaw on several research projects. A graduate student of Dr. Shaw's is analyzing hair collected during roundup from the foreheads of 100 bison for her seed dispersal studies. Another project involves looking at small animal use of bison wool. Other studies concern investigating how the herd is using the landscape and observing individual animals to try to get some idea of their daily (diurnal) living patterns. These projects are nearing completion. A group of graduate students at OSU are intrigued with what patch burning does to wildlife and the plant community and how this might effectively be used in cattle management. The idea is to burn a portion of the cattle unit rather than the whole thing each year. Four cattle pastures on the preserve are committed over three years into an experimental design. Two pastures will be entirely burned each spring and compared against two pastures that are in the patch burn program. Each pasture will have the same cattle-stocking rate. The preserve provides the fire and land base, OSU provides the students to assimilate the data, and the preserve's lessee provides the livestock. The lessee (cattlemen) also provides cattle production information by weighing the cattle coming in and going out. The students also look at what's gong on with prairie nesting birds since they are still on the decline. OSU students (ecologists) look at prairie nesting birds and what happens to the plant community. The hypothesis is that by having a more diverse landscape a more diverse habitat is provided for wildlife. It has been shown there is an economic incentive, so far as cattle production is concerned, to burn every spring, but during drought years, more production is obtained from prairie that hasn't been burned. The pastures that weren't burned last spring during a drought year, for example, produced more grass than the pastures that had been burned because they preserved the soil moisture. The patchy burn environment provides both high-quality forage (burned areas) and reservoirs of unburned grass. Hamilton said summertime bison herd size is targeted for 3,200 head and will likely be reached in the next four to five years. Over-wintering herd size at The Nature Conservancy's Tallgrass Prairie Preserve is targeted at 2,200 head. This means that after roundup each year, preserve management will face the challenge of finding an outlet for approximately 1,000 surplus head. Most bison sales after roundup have historically gone to bison breeders, but in recent years some preserve bison sales have been to buyers who in turn sell processed meat to specialty restaurants. Such was the case last fall when twenty-three 2.5-year-old bulls were sold to the American Bison Company out of Jackson, WY. Hamilton said major marketing decisions would have to be made to remove 1,000 surplus animals from the preserve each year. The ultimate desirability would be to have a dependable outlet for a given number of animals each year. The American Bison Company is an example of a buyer interested in purchasing a given number of animals each year of a certain quality; specifically bison that have been organically raised on grass with no supplemental feeding. Grass raised bison are considered a higher end health food by some buyers for restaurants. Hamilton says, "We would like to work with folks whose needs fit how we're raising our animals. We're trying to stay away from a production type focus." Feed lots provide a more consistent product, which other buyers prefer over bison meat with a tallgrass flavor, a short grass flavor, or a mixed grass flavor. Grass raised bison are much smaller and leaner than animals that have been grain fed and finished in a feed lot. Grain fed bison not only are beautiful, but also they are round in shape and will outweigh their grass fed counterparts by a few hundred pounds per animal. The ultimate goal is to develop a retail market for tallgrass fed bison The Nature Conservancy is an international, science-driven conservation organization dedicated to the preservation of plants, animals, and natural communities that represent the diversity of life on Earth by protecting the lands and waters they need to survive. |