They are holding an auction for 13 specimens.

https://svinews.com/bidding-open-on-13-bison/?fbclid=IwAR3bLArtT6qKaTvsxNWgJKl355bUp-rAWmHbEuBWfeJpLZCyl35XgbDUrgU

Speaking from experience….. got to have really good fences.

From the state herd so they probably are fairly wild.

We run about 40 head and have no problem at all keeping them in. Property is 48" Hi Tensile with two strands of barbed wire on top. I know a lot of ranches in the West who keep entire herds in with 5-strand barbed wire. If they have water and food, they will stay.

We cube ours at least every other day and, like a cattle operation, that certainly keeps them relatively calm. It gives them some supplemental feed and it does a great job at moving the animals when we rotate pastures and when we work them.

Bison are phenomenal athletes. Very strong and very fast. They can jump a 6' fence. Trump's border wall cannot hold them if they want out. But we have no problems keeping them in pastures.

What do you do with them besides look at them?

HTownAg98 said:

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What do you do with them besides look at them?

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Eat

As I said. Really good fences.

Gunny456 said:

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As I said. Really good fences.

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Agreed. One of my neighbors decided to get a couple a few years ago. He had just a barbed wire fence. I came home one afternoon to find them in a part of my land that was not fenced. They were interested in my bag of cubes, but not enough to follow me back to my pens. (probably a good thing for my pens) My property is across a county road from thousands of acres that was strip mined for coal and reclaimed in the 1980s. They eventually made their way there and it took a couple of weeks before they recovered them.

Yep. My T-sip neighbor had about 900 acres high fenced and got him 10 head. I am across the road from him. High fenced with Tite-Lok. I plant oats and wheat and turnips along one fence between he and I. Every single year they broke down the water gap to get in my field.
They would get out on the road, etc etc. They pretty much went where they wanted.

Gunny456 said:

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Yep. My T-sip neighbor had about 900 acres high fenced and got him 10 head. I am across the road from him. High fenced with Tite-Lok. I plant oats and wheat and turnips along one fence between he and I. Every single year they broke down the water gap to get in my field.
They would get out on the road, etc etc. They pretty much went where they wanted.

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LOL, my neighbor only had about 10 acres. I am not sure what he was thinking. I am about a mile from him, but they finally caught them nearly 10 miles away.

Oh wow.

This seems like a good thread to ask my question:

What is the difference between a bison in Wyoming and a buffalo in South Dakota? Is it just the name, or is there a phenotypical difference?

No difference. The purist wants to use bison as technically a buffalo is a water buffalo.

But most in the industry, and certainly Native Americans, call them buffalo.

Bison is the North American Buffalo. Buffalo are animals in Asia or Africa

This summer in Custer SP I asked the ranger where the bison were grazing that day and he corrected me and told me they were buffalo. I did not get an answer from him, but I assumed that it had more to do with native american terminology.

By and by, I'd love to buy some bison. Bye, son.

Struggle and Strifer said:

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This summer in Custer SP I asked the ranger where the bison were grazing that day and he corrected me and told me they were buffalo. I did not get an answer from him, but I assumed that it had more to do with native american terminology.

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If I was a state ranger there I would always correct everyone I met. "Bison" if they said buffalo. And "buffalo" if they said Bison. It would be fun.

Take out a f here and change the qu to a d and username might just check out.

Maybe he was just having some fun with me, but it has perplexed me since then.

I have a friend who owns a substantial farming and cattle operation in South Dakota. He bought a few even knowing what he knows. He said they completely destroyed his cattle working facilities while they were gathering and shipping them off. They literally had to start over and this is a guy with 500+ mother cows.

There is no doubt the pens / working facilities need to be very stout. Don't recommend using a cattle head chute for bison. Crowding pens should be at least 7' tall.

The problems talked about in this thread are more a result of people not understanding how to work them. You can't work them like cattle. If someone knows what they are doing, they are not a problem at all.

I help a producer near College Station work about 75 head - calves, yearlings, cows, and mature bulls - in less than two hours. Vaccinate, worm, tag,and weigh. No issues whatsoever.

My 40 can be worked with same procedures in about an hour and a half.

Have to be very quiet, low stress, crowded areas lined with tarps.

They really are not that bad.

My sip neighbor never worked them. They were just free range on his 900 acres with his other deer and exotics.
And kinda just went where they wanted…. Which was mainly anything they could do to get to my irrigated planted fields.