MAPLE CREEK, Sask. – Bison are not cattle and should not be treated as if they were, say producers.
They are concerned a new animal – one consumers won’t want – will be created by changing the way bison are fed and handled.
“I believe we’re changing them too fast,” said Dick Nuttall, who raises bison with his son Frank near Maple Creek.
Producers are “vaccinating them, and feeding them until their livers burn out,” he said at a bison seminar here last month.
Read Also
Agriculture ministers commit to enhancing competitiveness
Canadian ag ministers said they want to ensure farmers, ranchers and processors are competitive through ongoing regulatory reform and business risk management programs that work.
Shelley Glass agrees.
“One of the biggest challenges we see … is people really pushing the animal,” said Glass, who with husband Garth raises bison at Fox Valley, Sask.
Glass said some ranchers are putting the animals on grain, which may give new producers the wrong message about raising bison and will cause the meat to taste more like beef.
“We, as an industry, have to be really careful of that,” she said. “It’s to our benefit to keep them as natural as possible.”
But Marshall Patterson, livestock development specialist with Saskatchewan Agriculture, doesn’t think this will happen on a large enough scale to result in long-term changes.
“It should swing back” to letting the bison live as independently as possible, he said.
Patterson said the metabolism of bison slows in winter and they reduce their own demand for feed, compared with cattle that need more feed. He said there are not enough forage resources for people to feed bison as they do cattle.
Grain rations at feedlot
Bison going for slaughter are on a grain ration for 90 to 120 days at feedlots, he said, and that isn’t long enough to make a big difference.
Frank said his slaughter bulls are given “all the hay they can eat” and oats in a self-feeder.
“We don’t force the feed into them and then have to (slaughter),” he said, because the market demand is not consistent.
The Nuttalls run their herd on two sections of prairie, using one in winter and the other in summer. The Glasses have fenced off 280 acres of crested wheatgrass for their animals and plan to expand the area to one section this spring.
Handling bison often is not necessary, they said, and dehorning is a matter of choice.
