170. Building a Bison Empire in Oklahoma with Dusty Baker

So we'll get started with the FAST five. What's your name

dusty baker,

and what's your farm's name?

Cross timbers bison

Where are you located?

sulfur, Oklahoma,

And what livestock species do you graze?

the American bison

And what year did you start grazing bison?

2018.

Oh, very good.

Welcome to the grazing grass podcast. The podcast dedicated to sharing the stories of grass-based livestock producers, exploring regenerative practices that improve the land animals and our lives. I'm your host, Cal Hardage and each week we'll dive into the journeys, challenges, and successes of producers like you, learning from their experiences, and inspiring each other to grow, and graze better. Whether you're a seasoned grazier or just getting started. This is the place for you.

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So Dusty to get started on your journey. Why bison?

Well, I just there's a small herd here in my hometown of sulfur here at the Chickasaw National Recreation Area, and they've kind of always been here in our, our, our yard, I guess you could say, growing up here and just been very fond of him and I've just always kind of, you know, admired him and you kind of can lose track 'cause you just get used to 'em and being in your hometown.

Oh yeah.

I was just captivated by 'em. And I, I got to see a lot of the behind the, behind the fence stuff, you know, like in, in the pasture with them. And I just, I was just hooked to be honest with you. And so I, I, I just, I never, nothing against cattle. We eat beef forever and I showed sheep in high school and and I just, we, those kind of animals were just like, oh yeah, but. The bison just was just a completely different feeling to me and emotion being around them.

Oh yeah.

You know, I mean, it's just another thing when you turn and you see bison, you're like, oh my gosh, look at those bison, you mean, everybody looks, you're like, there's a bison right there. And so that's my kind of approach to this is like, that's cool. That's an animal, you know, that once almost disappeared. And. We can contribute to the conservation preservation of the American bison. So that's why I'm bison.

We go to pioneer woman boarding house fairly often. My wife loves going there

Mm-hmm.

and to be honest, the pioneer boarding house, that's fine. I go obviously, 'cause my wife goes, but then I force her to drive out to the tall grass prairie so I can see the bison.

Absolutely. Beautiful place.

I love seeing the bison out there and I, I went through a phase. I am no way a artist, but in fifth grade I drew pickups every day in art class and then somewhere through the year it transitioned into drawing bison every day. You know, not that you could ever tell they were bison, but. They've always been fascinating to me and, and I love seeing more now in high school, you mentioned sheep. Oh man. I did not show sheep.

Yeah, it, I agree. All I was like, why am I showing these animals? Like, you know, it And, and my family, the, my, my stepdad Kevin and his mom, grandma Joy, they've been raising sheep for since he was probably in middle school or high

Oh yeah.

And so, once my mom married Kevin, I just kinda went into showing animals and showing sheep and so FFA and four H and all that stuff. But yeah, I mean, I was like watching all my buddies, like they didn't work near as hard as I had to. cause they just, you know, if they're showing their pigs, they're just walking them around. My buddies are pulling their, you know, their heifers or steers with a lead rope, and I'm like, I'm over here trying to pick this. Lamb up and

yeah. And when I went through school, they were shaping those sheep. Like every week they'd have em in there on the stand trimming it. I'm like, oh man,

Yeah, all of it. It was, I learned a lot from it and

It's good.

yeah, patience was a, was it word I probably would say the most.

And you mentioned OSU in there and only thing I really wanna pull out from there. I went to OSU except I wasn't as smart as you. When I got to OSU, I got a job on the OSU Dairy Farm and worked out there. What did you do while you were at OSU?

I was luckily enough to have one of the coolest jobs I, I think any college student can have. I was a football equipment manager for the, for the, for the Oklahoma State football team. So just a student manager. Yeah, I was, it was pretty neat.

Yeah, I, I'm completely envious of that. I love OSU football. I love OSU and getting to do that. It's quite fascinating. And while we won't cover more of your time on this podcast, I think this is Oklahoma podcast. You were on there and you all talked fairly lengthy about some, some things about that time. So if the listener's interested, I suggest you go check out that podcast and we'll put a link in our show notes to it.

yeah, yeah. That was a great podcast, Mike.

Yeah, I, I heard that and I was like, oh, that, that would've been a dream time down there.

I know. it,

Probably got in more trouble than I would've needed to. So.

it was I had a lot of neat experiences and you know, I can, I can say I worked for Coach Gundy, so

Yeah.

cool.

So, so you make this decision and get some bison in 2018. How, how did that decision go? How did finding land to run cattle? I mean, I say cattle, I'm so used to saying

It's all right.

because it's always a resource that we've gotta figure out.

Yeah. Well, I just, honestly my wife and I, Marissa we're working our full-time jobs and stuff, and I just kind of turned and looked at her. This was before we got married. We were still just dating, but I kind of looked at her and I said Hey, what do you think about raising bison? And like her, she just, she was like, yeah, let's, let's do it. You know? And so, kind of jumped on board. She said you know, I don't want you to.

Oh yeah.

we just jumped into it, I guess you could say. And the reason we could jump into it when I say that is because my mom and Kevin had a property in sulfur. And we were still living in Oklahoma City at the time in our careers and stuff. And it was possible because they had an old dairy farm and some of it was ran down and stuff, but there was some fencing, there was an old corral. We had water. And so there was a sort of something there that we could do.

Oh yeah.

you know, turn it into a sort of a small bison place. And so we were so lucky because we would work in Oklahoma City, you know, and then mom and Kevin, Kevin mostly he had, had experience with bison before and he was the sheep guy again too. So, He just, he, he had had a lot of experience with exotic animals. He had worked at a Barker wilderness for a while back in the nineties. And so it was like this perfect deal for us to get started. And he took care of him during the week.

Oh yeah, that, that really made it nice while you were working away to have someone there to take care of them

Yep. It was,

to to get the farm ready. For those first five bison, did you have to do anything special to the fencing or was fencing and infrastructure already in place?

There was some fencing and there was an old corral. We had to raise a couple bars up. We had to weld, you know, some heights to it. Like, you know, we took this old dairy place and just kind of, we worked on some of the pens and stuff. As far as the fencing goes. We built new exterior perimeter fences and which was, we do six strands of barbed wire. And so that's what we did a lot of, on, on the exterior. And then our cross fences, we did, I think five strands of barbed wire,

Oh yeah.

it's all the standard height of a regular fence. We just use six and a half foot tall t post instead of six foot, and we drive them in the ground further on those six and a half foot. And then of course we put that top strand of barbed wire at the very top of the Yeah. As much as we can. So yeah, we, we did all that. And a lot, there's a lot of learning of, of stuff in there, so of, of the bison.

you, you'd had some experience with bison during your summers before. What surprised you initially about those five yearlings?

Well, you know, just, just their uniqueness. They're just so family oriented. I, I learned. Real quick, just how social they are and kind of how much they count on, count on each other. And so that was kind of one of the first things. And, and in raising 'em also, I was really worried about them kind of, you know, people just think that they're mean and that thought we're gonna try to hurt you. And it was, it was really the opposite of that.

yeah.

my initial thought of, I, I know these animals can be a little crazy. It was not like that. Of course, we were nervous, but they really chilled out because we gave them good water, we gave them hay, and we fed 'em, and they appreciated that. And so we just kind of acclimated together. I mean, it's just like any other animal, you know? But the bison gets that. It gets pointed the finger at 'em for being wild and dangerous, which we know they can be, but they weren't, so,

Yeah. On that you treat cattle. Badly. Or you can turn a, you can have a mess there too, real quick. A wreck.

absolutely.

And one thing we notice as we do daily moves with cattle, you're out there so much that cows are so calm because they're just so used to you. So being out there with your bison really helps with that, or I'm assuming

Yes, it does. Makes a huge difference. I, I will say that I probably, the biggest thing we learned is in the early stages, the first couple of years, I will say that handling them and, and when I, we work 'em, when you actually run 'em through a squeeze shoot and stuff, that is really where you have to manipulate your. Hailing facility, your systems, your runs, your alleys, all that, that was a big learning curve for us because within our first year, we, so we started with five.

Is them gorging, each gorging gorging boy, figure out how to say that. Is them gorging each other a problem when you haul 'em? I mean, obviously it was a problem that time. Is that a common problem?

I, yeah, I think so, but, and I've seen it, but this one just happened to get it in the right spot. It's like,

just one of those

it's just one of those deals and it just, you know, kind of like where you would shoot a deer kind of right there behind the shoulder. That's where we found it. But so obviously it, it hit a tough, it hit a gentle area and we just, it happens, and I've seen it, it just happened to be in a bad spot, but.

Oh yeah.

The thing was, is from there on, I was like, okay, well next time we move these animals, let's handle 'em differently and let's put 'em in different holding cells inside the trailer because, you know, it's like studying your animals. I know this one's crazy and I know she's gonna beat up this one. And so you gotta think about all those things and it's how you work 'em, how you load 'em. And then from then there on, we've just managed that better and how we put 'em on a trailer.

right.

know?

Throughout this journey, you, you started and Kevin was helping with taking care of him. You were working in the city and, and, coming back on the weekends. When did you, when were you able to make the transition and spend all your time out there?

Covid is whenever. That happened. So, we had Brooks, our daughter, and right at the beginning of like February of 2020, Brooks was born a month, a month later, spring break hit, and I was still coaching and teaching and basically at spring break that's when everything kind of went nuts. And I never set foot back into the classroom again. What, what we did in that is we actually, Marissa was on maternity leave. I was went on spring break and then it never went back.

Oh yeah.

finally when she got out of that career, we landed and. Stayed in sulfur so that all that covid stuff, I don't know, people say it all the time, but it just, it just got strange during that time. But it, but it was, it was good for us, so,

Oh yeah, COVID hit or spring break hit and then midway through spring break we're not going back to school. I was in school administration then, and we were meeting like all the time trying to figure out what in the world was going on, what we were going to have to do. Yeah. It was a crazy time.

it was. Yeah, so I, I resigned. We went on spring break and then I resigned in May, and so I got 10 years of teaching in basically.

Oh, very good.

Yeah.

Now at that point, I. Was the bison starting to be self-sustainable or was that more Marissa's working off the farm, she can help support the family and the farm. You're able to dedicate more time into it and grow it. And also you've, you've got some cabins in there

Yeah, yeah. So yeah, for sure she was still working and kind of taking on that load, and I was updating the cabins and trying to do the bison thing, and then I was doing the YouTube thing as well. So, yes, she, her kept her, you know, working definitely helped keep everything going, and we kind of made that decision so we could, I could be a stay at home dad and do all those things. And yeah, we, we, we managed it for a while and.

Oh yes.

you know, because bison take longer basically than twice as long in some cases than, than cattle per se. When you get, when you get yearlings, which is what we started off with, which is great because they were still little and you know, you get used to 'em. They get used to you. I really like that. But, you know, if you think about this here, here's a, if you want me to run with this.

Yeah, I, I think this is an interesting point because as I think about it in my li to knowledge. am guessing you're not breeding them till two or three, and then you've gotta get a calf outta 'em. That's gonna be a year later, and then you've got time before that calf is finished. So yeah, break down that timeframe so we understand that.

Yeah, you said it. So bison are able to breed at two years old and you know, bison, bison are like deer, elk, moose. They breed one time a year, a certain time a year, and then they're going to calf a certain time of the year. That's now you're gonna have some randoms in there, but they're essentially like a wild animal. They're to, they're, they're, they're, their clock is, is, like a wild animal. And so they turn to, typically in the spring, we just say may 'cause that's an average.

Oh yes.

It, it's gonna take that bias in at least two to three years, a bull to hit at least a thousand pounds. I try to shoot for 11 or 1200 if I can, and then, you know, it's depends on what you want to do, whether you want to sell your weaning calves. You know, I wouldn't sell a weaning calf until at least seven months old. You know, and, and we've changed some things over time. We, we leave them on their moms longer and all that. So, yeah.

Yes. It quickly adds

It, it does. And so for a bison rancher, and this is where I tell guys that are interested in doing it, I'm like, you're gonna have to, you can't make this a full-time job, you know, unless you're already farming or whatever. And I'm lucky I, I've been able to do it because of my wife set us up for this. And then the YouTube, you know, all, all that helps pay for everything. So you, you, you're not gonna make any money for four or five years if you start off with calves or yearlings.

Yeah, just one thing you mentioned there on YouTube, when did you start YouTube and when were you able to start seeing some return from YouTube?

I, so I started in 2019, almost a year after raising the bison. I was like, man, I was just naturally an educator. Obviously I loved being an educator and coach. And so I was like, I'm doing all these really neat things. I'm experiencing all these neat things with these animals. And Marissa and I, you know, we'd sit at home before we had Brooks and we would look into bison. Social media and, and, and stuff. And to be honest with you, like on YouTube, there was nothing out there consistently.

right.

I honestly, I, in YouTube. You have to hit certain thresholds before you ever start making an income off of it. And I forgot honestly what it is. You had to like have to have so many followers. You have to have so many hours of watch time.

Well, dusty, it's a thousand hours or a thousand subscribers in 400 hours of watch time in the last

It is

Be because I know that, because my channel's not quite there.

Yeah,

getting, it's getting

we can work on it. Yeah. So and, and then, but you know, I did that in 2019. I forgot all that stuff since then. But I don't know, to be honest with you when it started. But what really started changing as far as the YouTube goes is when I was consistent, I started being able to post every Sunday and Thursday. And I've been doing that for, I don't know, four or five years now. I feel like I've been consistent and.

right. Yeah,

you know, so

I, know during Covid, I started watching marble races on YouTube, which is just ridiculous,

yeah, hey, we all were just getting by, you know? So, but I, I think that's when I started. I was like, okay, I can, I can pay a feed bill. Maybe I could go buy another bison you know, start that kind of thing.

yeah, yeah. Right. I think talk to a lot of people about social media and growing a following. Consistency and quality is what I always hear brought up, but I lean strongly towards that consistency. I've seen some stuff out there that's just awful, but they post every week and people, you get you, I'm on, there's a podcast I listened to and they have co-host on it and they changed out. One of the co-host did not like the new co-host at all, but I like the content.

Yeah, I,

of course, this is from me, someone who doesn't have very many followers on YouTube and the podcast. Well, we're making it, but you know.

but, but you're right because that's where I saw the growth is because. Honestly, once you start getting those followers, like you're talking about the loyals,

Oh yeah.

know those loyal people, they're sitting there, they're, they're, I'm not saying they're sitting there, but they're, they're waiting on you and they're counting on you to put out that, that, that episode. And so, you know, if it's, I think of Yellowstone watching Yellowstone series when every Sunday at seven o'clock we were sitting down as a family ready to watch the new episode. That's the same thing for a lot of these loyal followers. And so that's you.

Right. I, I totally agree with that. Podcasting, YouTube, you have people I know I have certain things, certain YouTube channels I watch at a certain time. Certain podcasts I listen to on a certain day, so I'm expecting that to be there.

Yep.

Transitioning just a little bit from YouTube into regenerative practices, how have, you know regenerative practices has really came our, I don't know about to the forefront, but it's being talked about a lot more as you try and be, re more regenerative. How's that? What does that look like on a bison ranch?

It's been hard. I won't say it's been easy. There's a, a lot of input that has gone in and we're in the early stages of it. I know, because there's a lot of learning for me. But I love it. I, I really like it. I've enjoyed this transition and it's been, when I say it's been difficult, it's been a lot of learning some mistakes. But, you know, I, I had to get rid of a bunch of bison. I had to.

Oh yeah.

I'm a bird ding-dong. I, I like ornithology and, you know, I like care about what birds are out here, you know, all those things. The dung beetles, and, I don't know, it's pretty fun. So I, I enjoy it, but

just off topic, just a moment. Birds, I don't know how big you're into podcasts, but the science of birds. I love that

Really? Okay, I'll add that Yeah.

of

Science of Birds. I like it.

So when you think about regenerative practices, one of the things, or you're moving your animals more often, are you all able to do that with bison? You know, as we try and mimic nature, a lot of times we come back and say, well, bison grazed and really closed herds, and they migrated across the landscape. Do you still see that, that the bison, gray grays very close to each other? Are you having to use electric fence or all your fencing permanent? How are you facilitating that movement?

Yeah. When we first went into, you know, kind of building all this new fence around the property, that's when the Virginia thing kind of started coming in and one of these NRCS guys I work with says. Well, I was like, yeah, I wanna cross fence this. 'cause I was signing up for the Equi program and I was like, yeah, I really, I just wanna cross fence this. And he looked at me and said, why, why, why do you wanna do that? And he is like, I get it, you know, you wanna use the program and stuff.

Oh yeah.

I wanna, I wanna replay that inside of a fence. Obviously it's very difficult to, to repeat history, but, you know, the way I want to treat them, I wanna treat bison like bison. And so last year we put in our very first hot wire, and this spring early summer, I'm actually going to do the movement of mob grazing or adaptive grazing. For the first time because I've got 'em trained with a hot wire,

Oh yeah.

I really want to like move them on a daily basis kind of deal. And this is where I struggle a little bit because I'm like, okay, well if I want bison to be bison. You just let 'em roam, you know, let's move them from this 80 acres to this, 80 acres to this 40 acres constantly. Right? But bison picky and I went to an understanding ag training with Gabe Brown and Alan Williams, and it was at the Bad River Ranch, which is one of Ted Turner's ranches up in Pierre, South Dakota.

Oh yes.

oh my gosh. And I was just, I was like, I wanna do that. I'm like, if this 18-year-old girl out here can do this with over 200 yearling heifers on up, you know, I don't know how big bad River Ranch was, but it's massive. And I'm like, if she can do this I'm like, that's what I wanna do. And that's where I kind of learned about Gabe Brown and Allen. You know, they were like, you gotta force 'em to eat it. You gotta bison our picky and you gotta force 'em to eat it.

Oh, very good. That, that'll be interesting to see how that goes. And then we mentioned you've got that YouTube channel so that people can follow along and we'll have to get an update out there on the grazing

Yeah. I'll, I'll let you know what my it'll be interesting, but I'm, I'm really anxious to do it and I'm really happy with our, it's raining right now and we've had a lot of good rain here recently, and so

we have, yeah.

Yeah. I know you've been getting some out too to,

Yes, except I'm living wrong. Here we got three and three quarter inches over the last weekend. So to all those days, I didn't dump a rig age. My parents lived two miles up the road, and I think dad thinks, I think he said six and a half to seven inches is what he got. So it's like,

Oh my. What happened?

And we, we don't graze any cattle up there where he lives. That's actually my grandpa and Uncle Graze cattle up there. I'm like, I need to water down

yeah. yeah.

so.

That's crazy. I think we got five in that. Yeah. So it was really good, but it, I'm anxious to get out there and, and try it. And and you know, the great thing is, is about the whole regenerative thing is it's these, these bison love native grass. And so like, we have a lots, and, you know, we're trying to restore native prairie and stuff. And so I, I enjoy that part of it. And yeah. So

Very good. It'll be interesting to follow along with

No, I don't think so. We I, I can, I can talk bison for a long time, so I don't wanna get carried away.

and I think that's great. I, you know, I try and monitor the time a little bit. I'm, I'm going longer on podcasts because actually that's the complaint I want, that, I want. No, that's the complaint I get. I get people saying they could be longer.

Really? That's good.

to lean into that a little bit more. And it's longer than what I typically listen to a podcast, except I've been paying attention and actually I'm listening to longer podcasts. So

Yeah.

I it's a natural evolution, I think. So we're going a little bit

Well, good. Okay.

Let's transition to our overgrazing section

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and for overgrazing section, we're gonna take a deeper dive into something about your operation. And the thing we're really gonna talk about is getting started with bison. So you mentioned earlier that, hey, we could use more bison out there. how would someone go about even getting started? Are there special permits needed? I know you mentioned on fencing what you all did, but just kind of talk through that process for someone who's interested to get started.

So to, to have bison in the, as far as Oklahoma, as many, I mean, lots of, lots of states if you're considering most of the farming states, I guess I don't think there's any permits that you have to have unless there's some strange state out there. But you you don't have to have any special permit or anything, first

I'm gonna stop you right there. That's how my wife keeps me happy. She makes some cakes and cookies and, yeah.

yeah. That's the same thing. You gotta, you know. So, and, and, yeah, I always talk about a home base. You know, they, they, they need that home base and they need that feeling of like, Hey, I really like this place. And so with that, the fencing thing is like I said, we do six strands of barbed wire for our exterior. We do our T post every 10 feet, I think. And, and, and, and like I said, it's, it's almost the same height as, as a typical cattle fence. We just drive those.

yeah.

keeping 'em happy, staying in your fences. I've had issues where my only issues is, one, it's human error, leaving a gate unlatched, or not paying attention to your water crossings. Those are human errors. Those are, those are things that you can control,

Oh

you know, patch and fence up and those things. Where you can't control bison is two bulls fighting. They're gonna knock your fence down more than likely, and that's, you're, you're just not gonna stop 'em. There's nothing you can do until they're done. They're done. Now, that only typically happens from July. To August and September, right? Breeding season, that's when things get hot and heavy and we've had to manage that. So again, it's good management.

Yeah, let, let's talk about good animals for just a little bit. We had Becky on a podcast a few episodes ago and you know, she was talking about, you know, start with quality animals. And when we go out as we've got beef cattle on hair, sheep, I can identify good animals, look at their genetics or pedigree and stuff, and know that when you're looking at a bison, how do you know it's a good animal? What are you looking for?

So I did livestock judging when I was in high school, and I learned how to kind of look at animals. I'm, I wasn't the best, but I learned a lot about it. And I think about a cow, you know, I think about the square body of a cow, the length and the loin. You. That doesn't deviate very far off of bison. Now a bison is built different, right? The, the hump changes things up.

Yeah. Excellent examples there. And way to visual or to, to auditorily. Tell us some visual identifications we need to look at. One thing you mentioned there was woods versus planes to look at and be able to tell. Is, is there DNA testing to identify which subspecies or species do you have? Or are they visually different? Like you can look out there and say, oh, that's a woods, that's a plains. Of course, if you start crossing them that that dividing line gets blurred.

it does. And that's where, as bison ranchers, that's where, and, and this is becoming a more popular thing now that you're bringing it up. There's people that are mixing those woods, bison in with the planes, which I'm not a huge supporter of. But. You can definitely look at a full woods and a plains and, and you can notice the difference. Like one, one of the differences is a woods bull or a woods bison, their hump comes more forward to their back of their neck.

A northern animal.

I mean, yeah, pretty typical stuff. And, but they're more narrowed bodied, you know, to obviously fit between the trees in the

Oh yes.

Unlike a planes is gonna be more of the bulldog front, you know, like a, you know, American bulldog or whatever. Look and so, and then also neogen and the Canada Bison Association offer woods in Plains test, which we've parked. Partake in, in before. So, they, you can pull hair or get a tissue sample from their ear and you can send it in and you can get a Woods Plains test,

Oh, okay. And that that'll come back and say what percentage of their DNA is either woods or planes or Yeah.

yep. And, and you can, you can do that to verify it, which you, I, I try to encourage people to do that just so when you sell those animals, you know what you're getting. And there's proof there, but you can look and at some of the planes, bison that are crossed with woods, and you can see some traits in there that are, you know, obvious, Hey, this is a woods, this is a planes. But they're, they're toying with it and they're making a different animal. And I think genetically it.

Yeah. Another story, another debate.

that's right.

Yeah.

Yeah. So absolutely you need to know your goals. What, you know, why, why are we raising these animals? Are we doing it just for the nostalgic of being in your pasture, or are we gonna go after something here of breeding stock or meat? Whenever I got into it, I was obviously passionate about the animals and I wanted to be a part of something, of trying to raise an animal that, you know, the numbers almost just disappeared and. You know, so I, I wanted to be a part of something.

Oh

And then there's, and, and there's it, I know this goes on the cattle too, but there's a side that's focused on genetics and breeding good animals. So I'm kind of a, I'm a focus on genetics and breeding guy first, and then I'll take whatever animals that I don't think personally. Are meant for breeding or should be in the breeding line. We, we will take some of those and put in our processing side.

Oh yeah, yeah.

So

Now with, with someone thinking about bison, is that something that you're only going to run bison, or could you run bison with cattle, or is it preferable or suggested you don't?

I, cattle, I, I would say no. People have asked me that. I, I wouldn't encourage it. I'm not saying it's possible because it is possible. I know there's people that do it. You do have a chance of creating a beef low, I think somewhere in there, depending on what your program is. But which I highly discourage beef low. But I think you could do it, but it depends on obviously how much ground you have and stuff. Something that we've talked about is integrating goats.

oh, yeah.

you know, and I get it. They, that's, that's, that's a good deal. It's great. I mean,

I.

that's, I've got friends that have 'em, so, it's they carry that and the, it, it's, it's a very ongoing and popular debate on that. And so honestly, you can't, I wouldn't even take the chance of sheep at all. It's like an airborne disease. You, they can get it within five miles, supposedly.

Oh wow. And with the popularity of hair sheep, that's going to be covering huge

Huge areas. Yes. And the goats, it hasn't been proven yet. That they carry it, but there is a consideration that they can be a carrier. and and the thing about bison is if they get it, they'll die with like three or four days. It's, it's a very quick and painful death they go through. And so it's a touchy subject in the bison world for sure.

Is there a vaccination for that?

Not yet.

even work on it, because the bias in industry is not huge. So getting someone to work on it may be a little bit of a issue.

They do have a vaccine out there, but they haven't released it yet. They, we get updates on it every now and then at bison events. But they have something, but they haven't released it yet. And I, I don't know much about it. I know that the state vet here in our state of Oklahoma is considering pushing some laws. You know, about people bringing hair sheep in or people bringing bison in and kind of protecting the farmer rancher from, you know, insurance wise and all that.

Well, I'm not familiar with that at all. Yeah, and we, we run a few hair sheep here, so, yeah. That's interesting.

Yeah. It is. And, and I know the hair sheep, it's, it's popular when, you know, we're, we're not very far from the Dallas Metro two hours and there's there's some ethnic groups there that just, you know, that love those type of animals, the meat and stuff. And so, I, I see more hair sheep around here. Obviously there's the, the some around us are, they're far away. Far enough. But it hasn't affected us.

Yeah.

I don't know if it's manageable yet. Yes, it'd be awesome if there is a vaccine for it, because. If I could give something to some, some goats, like we we're trying to cut off our rip repairing zones. We're trying to do that now and protect our creeks and stuff, and repairing zone. And so I would love to throw the goats in there just to make up the difference. But I It's scary.

Right. That, that's a big risk because bison is your business. Yeah. Yeah. You gotta be very careful about that. And what, what, I'm also hearing that if you're interested in bison, that may be the, the area you need that you want to go into, you may not wanna consider some of these other

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Yeah. How have you found, and this this a little bit off of getting started with bison, but just if you're getting started with bison, you're looking at that end market. So how's the meat market for bison meat? How's the breeding stock market for bison?

the meat's great. Right now we're at some of the highest levels of of pricing in five years or so.

Yeah.

we you know, bulls right now, I think processing weight bulls, you know, over a thousand pounds are in that four, $4 and 60 cents range or somewhere in there. It was, I it's, it's pretty good. Right now last year last sales season was the highest it's been in a long time. And I think that the key about the bison industry, if you, you know, I go to this, the bison conference every year and. You've got three or four huge bison marketing processing guys there.

yeah.

you know, you kind of look at that. And I think to personally, to me, if you look at the cattle industry and where it's at, and you look at the bison industry, bison meat is becoming more popular. People are realizing the benefits, the health benefits of it. And there's, I think there's always gonna be a shortage of bison. Does that make sense? You know, I think there's, it, it's growing. And so, you know, the, these animals were in the millions here at one point, and obviously that's changed.

Well the turnaround on, you know, we talked about this earlier, if you get started in bison, it's a while before you have any marketable animals

Absolutely.

and it's more so than even in cattle 'cause you're working with some shorter or some longer times, I guess would be the correct way to say that.

I,

So that market is gonna be very slow to change and react. Do you yeah. is the pricing of Bison related at all to the pricing of cattle?

I think if you ask some guys, they'd probably say yes. For me it's, it's hard to, I don't know. I, I, I think it probably does, especially like the imports and stuff, all that, that kind of went on. You saw the price of, well, it's interesting because whenever the, the Mexico thing happened and there was a shortage there, and all the beef prices are still going nuts. The bison prices went up as well,

Oh yes.

you know, and so it makes you kind of think, okay, well there's something going on, and like, I'm, I'm just, I'm not smart enough to figure it out, or I don't dive into it enough, you know, but, and that's just not me. I probably should pay more attention to it. But there was, that all happened at the same time. So last year I was saying we had all these, the breeding stock prices were higher. And, you know, and the meat, and I think it all is because of the meat deal.

Yeah.

that's something to consider. Why, why it's more expensive. But you're also getting a very lean, you know, low in cholesterol, low in fat, you know, animal meat, healthy meat. So.

Before we transition to the famous four. Are there any tips on cooking bison meat?

Absolutely. Yeah. I always tell people 'cause we're used to cooking beef so much if you are chicken, whatever it is. But like for us it's beef. Don't overcook bison. It's very easy to do that compared to beef. That's why I use beef as an example because you know, you may throw on a ribeye beef ribeye and you cook it X amount at this temperature, a bison is gonna cook much faster because it is so lean. So the key is for. People cooking bison is, don't overcook it.

Yes.

you know, and, you know, whatever's comfortable to 'em. They're like, that bison was terrible, so just don't overcook it. It cooks much faster.

Excellent advice there. I don't believe, as I'm thinking, we've ever cooked bison. I've had bison out at restaurants, but I have, we haven't ever cooked any,

Yeah, Well, it sounds like you need a box sent to you.

it, it does. Yeah. My wife will be so excited. I found something else to spend money on.

There you go.

Act actually, wait, you should you should have sent a box of bison meat so we could have discussed it on the podcast. Wow. I missed a great opportunity there to

Well, maybe when we, if we come back to this, I'll let you know the disaster of trying to do adaptive grazing with bison. We can,

Oh, there we

yeah, we can set it up.

Dusty, it's time to transition to the famous four questions,

Are you looking to add functional traits to your cow herd? For over 30 years, GBT Angus has been developing cattle that best fit a low input environment. Fertile, functional, practical, and predictable Angus genetics are their core breeding values. They implement a short 45 day calving season to ensure only the most fertile genetics get replicated. Their no touch policy also stabilizes calving ease, maternal intelligence, and the convenient traits of sound, functional udders and feet.

same four questions we ask of all of our guests. And our first question, what is your favorite grazing grass related book or resource?

My buddy Carson, this is your buddy too recommended dirt to Soil, and I loved huh

He's big on dirt to soil.

Yeah. Yeah, I, Carson introduced me to that and I listened to it, driving to pick up bison on a long journey one time, and I loved it. So that's where it started for me. And then I went to their class and so it all made sense for me.

very good. In fact, I need to reach back out to Gabe Brown, like early on in the podcast journey, like episode 30, Gabe, I had had it set up for Gabe and then something happened and we weren't able to make it happen, and I haven't ever got him back on the calendar. I

Yeah. Yeah, you do. He's, he's a good one to list to.

Yeah. Our second question, what's your favorite tool for the farm?

Hmm. That's gonna be really torn between my hydro bed, which is my you know, arm bed for hay. But to be honest with you the year round tool is gonna be my three c cattle feeder bison feeder, I should say. But the cube feeder is the number one tool because when they see it, they know what they get.

yes.

And having those cubes, this just goes back to keeping bison happy. They'd follow me to town in that thing

Oh yeah.

because they love those 20% cubes. And it is probably the ultimate tool because I can move them anywhere I want.

You know, it's, it's the ultimate tool with cattle and even if you're doing grass finish, you can feed just a little bit of cubes and then you shake that, shake a sack and they're right

A hundred percent. Yep, a hundred percent.

Our third question, what would you tell someone? Just getting started?

You better love them. You know, you don't, don't get into this thing 'cause you wanna make a bunch of money. You gotta love the animal first. They have a unique history. They were lucky to have them. And I think if you think I, I would encourage conservation wise, how you can be a part of something to bring back a, a, a, a very unique species of animal that just was by the millions. It's such a keystone species on the great plains and you get to raise it.

Get started.

started. Yeah.

Lastly, woo. Can't even talk even more. Lastly, where can others find out more about you? I.

You can email us at x timbers bison@gmail.com if you're interested in raising bison. And then all from our website, you can kind of get and follow us along there. It has our links to Instagram, Facebook. We're also on TikTok, and of course our main channel is YouTube. And then we have our merch and meat when we have meat in stock and we have native pecans and some clothes all on our website@crosstimbersbison.com.

Very good, dusty, really appreciate you coming on. I'm starting to say that, but wait, there's one more question. What question do you have for me?

So I kind of thought about it earlier. So you, you're an Okie, so you've been around them for a while, but I always wanna know what's people's first thought of like a bison? Like what is your, what is your thought of, of maybe, I always wanna know people's opinion of what do they think about raising animal? Not that you want to or would, but what is your outside perspective of hearing the word raising bison, you know, of that thought process?

I, I would love to except well, first off, like I said, in fifth grade, I can remember transitioning from drawing pickups to bison. I've always loved bison. And we go over to tall grass prairie, so I can see 'em White Oak. I'm not too far from there. And the little Shawnee Indian tribe used to have a herd of buffalo

Mm-hmm.

So I'd go outta my way to see 'em because I just think it's so wonderful to see 'em. And you read about those descriptions of the bisons on the Great Plains, and we'll never see those, those images they describe with words in those journals. And it's just hard to fantom even that because they, they just talk about it blanketing an area and how they migrated. So I, I come to 'em full of fascination and if there was a way for me to raise a few, I would do it.

ornaments,

but I still would need a facility to handle them. And I love seeing what you're doing there with them. I love how you all interact with them, but I just think because of facilities, it probably won't happen here, but I do find 'em fully fascinating and interesting.

Well good. That's, you know, that helps me 'cause I always kind of wanna know what, what people think from. From an outside perspective of, of, of what we do. And you kind of said it a little bit and made me think of it as the interaction.

comes to mind.

it does come to mind and I, I, I see the videos all the time. We always see the bad of Yellowstone National Park, you know, and that's just because people are failing to pay attention to the suns or the warnings and how dangerous that animal can be.

Right. And, and they're reacting based upon their nature and the way they would react to alleviate a threat. In their past, the way they're, they're trained to alleviate a threat. And if you're getting into their space, that could be a problem. And when you're talking, I don't wanna say wild, but maybe bison that's not as intensive as yours, their flight zone or their zone of fight even is gonna be greater than what yours are.

Absolutely. Yeah. Yep.

And the public doesn't always realize that, but that, when we say that, that's the same for our beef cattle out here. You take a ram out here, you might wanna be careful turning your back on a

That's very true.

so people just have to be aware. Yeah, they are animals and they're reacting to the way they were created, just as we react that way too. You know,

Yeah. And, and this is this, I, I'd like to just throw this little piece in here just for people that are listing that if you do go to Yellowstone here, here's two things that are going on during that time, and this is where you mostly see all the injuries happen, you know, of bison attacking a person is, there's two things going on in the national park at this time of the year. When, when, in the summer, okay. In May, the, they're having babies.

Oh yeah.

They, those mamas, they change that mindset, and now they're, they're, keeping the wolves away, you know? They're, that's their job. And then also a very high intense time when Yellowstone's getting most of the visitors in the park is July. There's something else going on in July. It, it's breeding season. Those bulls have got it on their mind and they are gonna keep everything away from those females as much as possible. You know?

Right. Because both of those times, whereas, you know, most other times they would use flight to get out of a situation, but a cow with a baby calf can't use flight because the calf may not be able to go with her for some reason. Yeah,

So that's why I'm like, be aware when you go there,

Be aware. Yes.

not to go there in the summer anyways. I wouldn't say that. I, I'd say go in October. That's when we went. It was just, it was magical. So,

yeah. Very

anyways.

Well, dusty, really appreciate you coming on and sharing today.

Yeah. Thank you. This has, this has been fun. We, we gotta do this again.

Yes. I'm, I'm game. We probably need to put it on our calendar or I get busy

yeah. Or we just let that email slip by.

Or that happens, you know.

Yep.

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