VALHALLA CENTRE, Alta. – Improved genetics, hard culling and good feed have cut six months off the time it takes the Hanson family to finish their bison in their northern Alberta feedlot.Serle Hanson of Hanson Bison Ranch in Valhalla Centre said their spring calves used to be finished and ready for slaughter the following June.Last year, the animals were ready for slaughter by December and the family is hoping the animals will reach 550 pounds by November this year.”We don’t mind keeping them one winter, we don’t want to keep them two,” he said.The family has about 200 cows, down from 300 before the drought.”We culled our oldest and least efficient cows,” said Hanson during a Bison Producers of Alberta tour of his Peace River area farm.Hanson, who bought his first animals in 1991, has found bison are easier to calve than beef cows and don’t seem to be bothered by the cold weather.”Calving is the killer with cattle. Now all we worry about is nutrition and management. That’s the beauty about bison, they calve themselves. In the winter, if it’s 40 below, they don’t mind a bit.”Hanson got a crash course in marketing bison meat when the bison co-op in North Dakota shut its doors. He was given hundreds of kilograms of bison meat in return for money and was forced to become a salesman. “I never got into bison to be a marketer,” he said.Hanson set up a booth at the Granville Island market in Vancouver.”Once you begin selling direct to customers, you get a better understanding of what the customer is looking for,” he said.”People want to see the farmer. They want to know where the meat is coming from and they want to buy it direct.”He later closed his Granville Island market, but still supplies two meat shops in Vancouver.Marv Moore of Debolt, Alta., said the bison industry is making a steady recovery. Bulls will sell for $2.85 per lb. on the rail while heifers sell for $2.65.”If it can get to $3 a lb., you can afford to pay producers $1.50 a lb. for their 400 lb. weaned calves,” said Moore.”That will make it viable.”
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