Oh, give me a home, where the buffalo roam ♪♫♩

Photo courtesy Battle River Bison Co.

My late father used to sing this song for me at bedtime. It's one of my favourites! His lovely tenor voice echoes in my memory.

They are bison, just to be truthful, but you get the idea. They are mistakenly called buffalo, but truly are called American Bison, found on the Great Plains.

On a drive into Carleton Place to take photos of the NCR Habitat build, I spotted them having a bit of a dance in the field.

Well, perhaps more of a '–tag, you're it!'

This local farm appeals to the locavore in me. For my vegetarian friends, do not read any further!

I simply say that I support our local farmers. It is important to make good choices.

The video was a bit dull, with traffic zipping by, but they were having so much fun. I brightened up the video. You can see the critters barreling around.


Bison from Jennifer Jilks on Vimeo.
Battle River Bison Co.
They offer several recipes on their webpage. Soups and stews, ribs, ground bison r

Bison in Canada, census years 1991 to 2006

ecipes, roasts, Recipes from the Canadian Bison Association . Bison on the Battle River Bison farm between Perth and Carleton Place.

They are mammals and herbivores, more information is at National Geographic. They grow to have a head and body length of 2 - 3.5 m, and are as tall as a tall man (5 - 6.5'). They weigh between 422 - 998 kg (930 to 2200 lbs.).

Camera Critters #191

They run up to 65 k/hr (40 mph), and weigh a ton or so.
Like cows and my deer friends, they regurgitate their food and chew it up.
There were Wood Bison and Plains Bison, the former living farther north, with the Plains Bison living on...yes, the plains of North America.

For more info about the extirpation of the bison–Gutenberg e-Books
The Extermination of the American Bison (1888) 
by William Temple Hornaday

They were hunted to near extinction, by both First Nations and white hunters. Before the guns, there were plenty of these beasts.
"With these figures before us, it is not difficult to make a calculation that will be somewhere near the truth of the number of buffaloes actually seen in one day by Colonel Dodge on the Arkansas River during that memorable drive, and also of the number of head in the entire herd: 480,000."


The sheer numbers of these beasts convinced them that they would never have an impact on the herds.

The gun increased the numbers that were taken, and many began to take only the tongue. Heads fetched from $10 -  50 depending upon the gender and size of the animal, mountable skins sold for $50 - 150. The railway increased the numbers of heads and hides that could be shipped.

As early as 1701 the Huguenot settlers at Manikintown, on the James River, a few miles above Richmond, began to domesticate buffaloes. Fortunately, there are many that have begun to do this quite successfully in Lanark County.

The big problem is the lack of genetic diversity, due to the extirpation of the species by 1998.
As livestock, they tell us, they do quite well. However, many of them have been bred with beef cattle, and the genetics may prove to be another human experiment with animals gone wrong.