My Travels

[Tobina+1]

Another travel update!  Last week, I was down in Osage County, OK, north of Pawhuska on The Nature Conservancy Tallgrass Prairie helping work their bison herd.  We worked 2,300 head of bison from Wednesday morning through Sunday afternoon.  They are finishing up the calves today, and have about 220 head of those.
TNC rounds up their bison once a year and sorts off all older animals to sell, along with weeding out some of the young animals.  They are trying to keep their numbers around 2,000 adult animals, which is the number that the grazing can support.  All the bison have the RFID tags in their ears, and they use AgInfoLink software to help manage the data.  When an animal comes into the chute and the tag is scanned, the animal's data shows up on the screen... all the data for their entire life.  They mostly just collect weights each year, and indicate if the animal has been DNA tested for Cattle genetics (TNC is trying to become more of a "pure" bison herd).  They also vaccincate the animals against disease.
Here are a couple pictures from the bison works.  The bull in the picture was about 1600 lbs.  The largest one we saw was close to 1800.
I did get to ride in the trucks again this year to help bring them into the corrals... which is a very exhilarating experience!  You feel like you are running with the buffalo!

[Clubine Ranch]

Golly is this a timely post, my sister is coming in from Illinois, and she and her husband have visited The Nature Conservancy Tallgrass Prairie and love it. They will enjoy your post on the working of the bison. Dale and I went for a little drive there a couple of years ago and we sure need to take a little day trip again. Beautiful place. Thanks for sharing.

[Tobina+1]

It's too bad they don't open the bison works up to the public, but, like anything public, they'd run the risk of getting bad publicity or people using aspects of the works to furter they're own agenda.  But, donate to the NC Tallgrass and you'll be personally escorted around the works!  Donate even bigger, and you might get your picture with a bison in the chute!

Here is a good slideshow from the Tulsa World News.  The female voice at the end of the clip is me!  No picts, though.
http://www.tulsaworld.com/webextra/content/2008/slideshows/BisonRoundUpNov08/index.aspx

[Bonnie M.]

I really enjoyed reading about this, and watching the video.  You may have already said, but, how many acres are there in the
N. C. Tallgrass Prairie?

Thanks for posting this, it's very interesting.

[Tobina+1]

23,000 acres is the latest acreage, I think.  Not all of that is used for bison, though, as they do have cattle grazing leases on some of the land.
http://www.nature.org/wherewework/northamerica/states/oklahoma/preserves/tallgrass.html

In a couple of weeks (I'll let you know when I get an exact date), there will be video of the roundup on the Today Show!

[littlelamb]

thank you tobina for the video that was amazing

[Tobina+1]

I haven't been very good about keeping you all up to date to my travels!  Other than January/February, it's actually been pretty slow (travel-wise), which was good (especially during those early pregnancy months!).

My latest travels were just last week and I was up into Iowa.  I stayed in Ames, IA, a nice college town.  Reminded me a bit of Manhattan during the summer when the students were gone.  We traveled north of Ames a ways, as well as a little bit West.  It was HOT.  One place we went to didn't have a/c in their house and I was about sweat-soaked by the time the audit was done!  The temp in the house when we left was around 89 deg. 

We did run into quite a storm one afternoon; it was so humid during the days that it really stoked up the storms in the afternoon and evenings.  Unfortunately, one of the feedyards that I visited had lost 29 head of cattle in one day!  They were spraying the cattle with water, but couldn't keep ahead of the heat that day.  The next day, they made a trip to town and stocked up on hoses, sprinklers, nozzles, etc.  I'd heard that a feedyard in Nebraska had lost 50 head that same day!

It was interesting to see the difference in the crops from KS to IA.  Even between southern IA and central IA!  The corn in the South IA areas was about waist high, whereas the corn in Central IA was only about knee-high.  When I got back to KS; our corn had already tasseled out!  Interesting, though, it seemed like the soybeans were about the same; maybe even a bit more mature in IA compared to KS.  That's one thing I really enjoy when I travel; is to compare the differences in crops and land.

[Tobina+1]

Brush ramadas for 20K+ cattle... that'd be a sight!     Of course, with the winter wind and spring storms, they'd have to rebuild them every year!