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seen one with hoof rot and rarely had one with eye problems. I've never had to doctor a buffalo since I've been on the place," he added.
Another advantage of buffalo, Chad explained, is that unlike cattle they don't need hay or other supplement in winter because they can forage in deep snow and they have thick, insulating fur and a low winter metabolism.
"There are no disadvantages to buffalo. They do everything you wish cattle would do," said Jim Budd, a former cattleman who made the conversion to buffalo ranching 11 years ago. Budd and his wife, Sheri, run buffalo on their 12,000-acre ranch south of Rushville in Sheridan County and their 2,000-acre ranch near Harrison in Sioux County.
"I was born on a horse chasing a cow, and I love cattle, but they near starved me to death," Budd said. "You just can't make any money raising cattle. I looked at buffalo and I could see what they were doing. So I got into them as fast as I could."
Converting his cattle ranch to run buffalo was fairly simple. Budd tore out all his interior fences giving the buffalo free range of the ranch and added an electric wire to the top of his three- and four-strand barbed wire exterior fences. He also beefed up his old stock corrals, built a series of wedges for running buffalo into the corral, and upgraded his windmill tanks. "Buffalo are a herd animal," Budd said, "and come to water all at once and leave quickly. If the tanks aren't sufficiently large, the calves get crowded out and don't get a chance to drink."
Getting stock is the difficult part of getting into the buffalo business because the demand for animals is outstripping production and inflating prices, Budd explained. Last year buffalo heifer calves sold for about $2,500 and bull calves for about $800. In comparison, beef calves were selling for about $400. "With cattle prices so low, and high interest rates and high land prices, it's almost impossible for a new person to get into cattle ranching these days," Budd said. "Bankers are starting to realize that the only way some ranchers are going to save their ranches from foreclosure is to get into buffalo."
Some, though, wonder if buffalo ranching might be a fad, quick to fade like emu and ostrich ranching. Not according to most buffalo producers. Low in fat, low in cholesterol and considered a health food by many, buffalo meat is sold in a growing number of grocery stores and restaurants, primarily in larger market areas.
In 1998, only 20,000 to 25,000 buffalo were slaughtered in the United States compared to nearly 100,000 cattle slaughtered daily. "We have much more growth to do; we've just started to tap the market," Budd said. "Wendy's and McDonald's can't put a buffalo burger on the menu because we can't supply them with the meat."
Even with the buffalo business booming and the cattle business in a slump, neither Budd nor Peterson believes there will be a major movement of cattle ranchers into the buffalo business.
"Over the years things have changed," Peterson said. "I've had ranch men visit me in the grocery store and ask me questions about bison, especially when the price of beef was going down. But I think for the most part, people around here are cattlemen and they are going to remain cattlemen, whether cattle are profitable or not.
The Native Grazer Bison first migrated to North America from Asia about 100,000 years ago, crossing a land bridge that formed between Siberia and Alaska when ocean levels receded during the Ice Age. The giant bison (Bison latifrons), with horncores spanning seven feet from tip to tip and weighing about 25 percent more than the modern bison, became extinct about 15,000 years ago near the end of the Ice Age. The somewhat smaller-bodied Bison antiquus, with horncores spanning three feet, survived the Ice Age and evolved into the modern bison (Bison bison) about 10,000 years ago.
The modern bison, with horncores spanning roughly two feet on males, later evolved into two subspecies in North America: the plains buffalo (Bison bison bison) and the wood or mountain buffalo (Bison bison athabascae). Wood buffalo, which are darker, woolier, larger and with a broader skull than the plains buffalo, ranged over much of Canada, Alaska and the Rocky Mountains before
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