BURK’S FALLS – They’re an icon of North America.
At one time so plentiful, it is said that the prairies were blackened by the herds of bison that grazed the vast stretches of grassland.
Looking at the noble heads of the beasts adorned with dark, curved horns, one can’t help but think romantically back to a time when the west was wild for reasons other than their politics.
Some pastureland in Armour Township with a small herd of plains bison is invoking those thoughts in passersby.
“I can’t really remember the minute that I decided to farm buffalo,” says Dave Marshall from his dining room table overlooking the animal’s feeding area. “I’d seen them in a lot of places and was always interested.”
Dave and his wife Jenny keep anywhere from eight to 12 head of the majestic bovines on their Leggett Road farm just outside of Burk’s Falls. They’ve had the animals for a few years now, slowly building up the herd by buying a couple of calves at a time.
At first the bison were a bit of an experiment. One they are slowly becoming more attached to.
Already living on the farm but working for CN rail, when Dave started to think about what he was going to do after retirement he says it was natural for him to think about animal husbandry.
“My wife Jenny wasn’t really keen on cows,” says Dave. “Mind you she wasn’t really keen on buffalo either.”
Any doubts Dave had soon disappeared.
“Once I tasted bison I was hooked,” says Dave.
Jenny says it took her a bit longer.
“I didn’t really like the idea,” says Jenny. “I was kind of afraid of them.”
By initially purchasing small, young bison, Jenny says the animals and her grew more comfortable together.
“They get used to our smells and used to us, but if somebody new comes around they are very wary,” says Jenny.
For the most part the farm looks like any other cattle farm with page wire fencing lining the pastures and round bales stacked up and under cover. The big difference, apart from the dark-humped grazers: the coral is a heavily-engineered affair.
“I haven’t seen any aggression out of them until I go to handle them,” says Dave. “Until you try and contain them or separate them, they are very quiet generally.
“. . . If you make a motion to touch them they bolt. There is no doubt that they are wild animals.”
To deal with the wildness the Marshall’s corral is lined with plywood eight feet high with no openings for the bison to look through. The loading chutes have an array of sliding doors that also have plywood cladding to stop the bison from testing them.
While getting a calf at another farm, Dave says he saw a bison cow go over a seven-foot tall corral wall.
“The more you confine them the bigger the fence you need,” is Dave’s rule of thumb.
His experiences handling the bison gave him plenty to talk about with local cattle farmers who, Dave says, keep telling him, ‘I’ve got cows like that.’
The wildness is also part of the Marshall’s attraction toward the bison.
Other than keeping them in hay during the winter months, Dave says the bison couldn’t be more low maintenance.
Weather, winter or summer, doesn’t seem to phase the animals that survived for century after centuries without so much as a lean-to.
“I made a special pasture for them in the summer around a place with some trees for shade to keep cool. On the hottest days in the summer they’re up on the top of the hill happy as could be,” says Dave.
“They don’t need any help calving and even if they did, you couldn’t get near them,” says Dave. “The calves are up on their feet minutes after they are born and running around.”
That’s also when the bison cow’s behavior turns.
“I won’t go in with them when they have calves,” says Jenny.
Dave says that the whole herd becomes protective of the newborns and it’s obviously best to give them their space.
Another place the wildness is a factor is herding the animals – you don’t.
“You try and herd them and they run all over the place. It’s impossible to get them to go in whatever direction you want them to,” says Jenny. “You’ve got to convince them that they want to go somewhere, which means a lot of shaking the grain pail.”
That wildness, however, doesn’t make it to the kitchen table.
“I took some bison burgers to work last week and the guys had no idea it wasn’t beef,” says Dave.
The taste, he says, is very similar to that of beef, without the wild game taste sometimes associated with venison or moose. Generally bison meat is leaner than beef and is said to have a slightly sweeter taste.
The meat, admits Dave, is sold at a premium and it is not just because of its novelty.
“They take twice as long as it takes beef cattle to get them ready to butcher,” says Dave, pointing out beef is often ready for butchering around or before it is a year old. “My guys that are 18 months aren’t even worth thinking about butchering.”
One thing is for certain, the Marshalls don’t see bison as a get-rich-quick scheme.
“We butchered three animals last year and that’s enough for now,” says Dave.
Once he is retired, Dave says he’d like to double or triple the number of animals he’s keeping though he thinks that will be more for his own benefit than the bottomline.
“I don’t see where I’m going to make any more at this than any other kind of farming,” says Dave.
Not that there isn’t a revenue stream.
In business just a few years and relying on word-of-mouth and people driving by, the Marshalls say they have already found a number of clientele who needed no introduction to bison meat.
“I was really surprised how many people question what we feed,” says Dave. “They are just as concerned, if not more, about that than they are anything else.”
But it isn’t just bison connoisseurs that are knocking on their door.
“We put an ad in the paper and the phone started ringing, so the interest is there,” says Dave.
One of the biggest markets for bison meat is in Europe which Armour Bisons is tapping into sort-of second-hand with European immigrant tourists coming back summer after summer.
The successes don’t seem to be the main motivation for the Marshall’s though.
Dave and Jenny, after keeping a small herd for several years, still get a rush watching the majestic animals plod over the hills.
“They’re so beautiful to watch just in my herd. I can’t imagine what it was like to see thousands of them running across the plains,” says Dave.
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