Buffalo Ranch

does a person really need ice for your cooler when the ice doesn't melt anyway [Music] here she comes becky loves hopping into a cold pickup in the morning are you going to scrape my windows no it smells smells like buffalo poop in here yeah i am so short i can't even it's impossible i would need a ladder to scrape your windows that is such a convenient excuse where are we at becky i'm going to a bison farm say what a bison farm bison not buffalo bison bison well they called them buffalo yesterday but apparently they're not actually buffalo buffalo live in africa according to google hey dog morning scott i got you on video already awesome i didn't want to give you a warning oh that's good what's going on today well you tell me well we are going to go move a couple bunches of bison and then we're going to feed this group down here they just got weaned just a week ago and then we are going to go out check out the herd bulls maybe give them a little bit of protein cubes just a little hitter we call it little little it's got a micro nutrient package in it so that's what we've got going on today so this is scott osmond and we are what i mean what town are you in here we are near mission south dakota uh this area is called hidden timber um it's right in the middle of the rosebud sioux indian reservation south central south central south dakota we're south of the capital about 100 miles um we we've been farming and ranching here i'm the fourth generation my great great grandpa could be yeah my great grandpa he came here from the omaha area originally settled near winter in the next county over near trip county and then my grandpa got sent out here when he was in high school been in the you know 40s we had arrangement up here on the reservation and we started ranching here we've been right here ever since awesome we spent some time out here yesterday and got to see the bison do some fun stuff yeah maybe drove around with some rifles a little bit yeah we might have done a little bit of that now we're gonna go do some work today so we're gonna take you guys along with us and see what goes on in a bison farm yes [Applause] back up the road they'll be grazing winter wheat and third cutting alpha alpha and some prairie prairie grass and they won't be fed anymore so they'll pretty much be just grazing cover crops winter wheat all that stuff until probably about february then lots start feeding them look at they got they got frost on them on the bison morning ladies these are all bread uh bread mother cows either from uh two-year-old bread heifers although it's five-year-old cows which is young um most of our animals are pretty young yet we we got in by our first animals in the fall of 17. i know it had been the fall of 16 and they got here in 17. and right now we're feeding them protein pellets what exactly are we giving them we're just giving them it's just a it's just a protein feels a little bit of protein in it new nutrient package with a bunch of chelated minerals in it just supplementing their diets a little bit supplement well it's actually more of just a treat really i mean that one's horrible usually when they move to new cash to get us that way they want to move faster sure keep them moving to mimic their natural movement you want the herd to constantly be moving yep so these girls up here this is about oh 16 1700 acres of grass and they're moving mostly in quarters um so they're in patches about 160 acres and they're moving about every eight to ten days around that area so we're just getting a little bit they're only getting about a pound and a half a year just something to remind them to uh always follow us to the next pasture oh good she made it thanks for not losing my gopro scott scott i see a lot of open land but i'm not seeing any bison yet there's hopefully 180 pairs out here somewhere of a license 180 bison pairs no they didn't run away yeah yesterday i heard you call them buffalo a few times yes is that acceptable how do i put it like we like to call buffalo and that's like what people think the west's an american buffalo named buffalo um but the scientific term is bison and we're trying to use that more we're trying to use that term more because it's kind of a long story but the water buffalo guys are labeling their stuff is buffalo so they're living as american buffalo and it's not that big a deal but we're trying to stick with the bison so it's to decipher between the two yes because it's such a smaller so people farm water buffalo big wade there's way more water in the u.s not the u.s but in the world but there is in the u.s too there they are i would say we're up on a hill here oh yeah they're just six miles that way so it's right over there we'll take off and bounce through this pasture and see if we can wreck this super duty back here you're gonna throw up getting up in my grill becky gets carsick going down the interstate but then we're in the front seat no yeah that's the key see for those who follow me on instagram we constantly make fun of people who wear vests tucker are you cold he's definitely cold he wishes he had a coat do you want to go way around them and then we'll we'll head right at them and was they're of course the furthest possible way away from the gate we'll see if they want to follow day so they really moved so much faster than i expected i thought we'd be fiddling across this mile long pasture all day long is it just because they like the stuff you're dropping or well they know they're going to get moved to a fresh pasture and they want that too they see this rig they know they're going to they're getting fresh grass sure and then they just they get excited like especially on a cool morning here they just they want to run and they don't they could run for 20 miles like this you know they're so athletic sure and yeah they're just they're fired up they know they're getting some fresh grass we generally only give them you know the cake when we're moving to a fresh pasture just it's a little something just so that they they treat yeah it's just a little treat you know it's just yep just like you and doritos or whatever i do run for burritos did you just say back the poop from the buffalo is smaller than i thought it would that's a small bison poop there's some big ones here they come look out scott there's a bunch of bison behind you oh they thought i told them to look out they stopped instantly look at the steam fresh pasture ladies they come quick it's just awesome made it through so how many herds will you do this with today uh we're just moving these two herds today because that's just a scheduled moving time yep so we move like on this unit we'll move anywhere from every two weeks to three weeks on this herd that herd that we just moved we're in the process of getting a cross fence program it's only four pastures right now we're going to turn it in like eight or nine pastures we're in the process of working with the nrcs help us with cross fencing and water development because what your goal is you want more animals on less area for a smaller amount of time people it's hard for it doesn't when you first hear it doesn't make sense you want more animals on a smaller area but it's just for that shorter period of time so because you want to keep them moving right yeah you want to keep moving you know you want to get in the pasture uh you know smash down eat it and then move on to the next one that's so we these are bigger patches so they're moving every you know two weeks three weeks four weeks um but over there after we get that project done there'll be equal pastures of like half sections two quarters and so they'll be moving every like 10 days or 10 days or two weeks they'll be moving past your passion faster okay so we do that with all the herds up the house it's a little bit more intense because everything is just in quarters and like 100 acres those ones are getting moved every eight days okay so um the far herd our big herd over there the 275 pairs they're getting moved um they have oh like six pastures they're getting moved every three to four weeks so okay as time goes on we're just gonna keep cross fencing keep fencing out more farm ground grace cover crops develop water um just gonna keep on keep on mimicking the natural movement of how they moved you know for thousands of years that's right [Music] so they're slowly walking this way is that because they heard us coming through the gate oh yeah yeah well they heard us coming down the road they can tell they know they're smart [Music] heads up coming through excuse me they come quick that's what she said so i'm told this one on the front here that's doris doris has got her own personality she's she's the boss bison what's up doris is the boss bison the boss cow is there always a like a boss cow oh there is usually but she's definitely like very definitely the boss feeling good she's taken off into overdrive those are the doors oh there's doris so out in the middle of the pastures here they got a lot of solar powered water water troughs yeah water tank the 30 foot bottomless tank this is kind of the standard for this area these 30 foot bottomless tanks just have bent night in the bottom and we put these up just to try to keep them from getting in the tank um it seems like it seems like it almost makes them want to get in the tank more because there's something there to rub on but we have some tanks that don't have any protection and we don't have any issues and we have tanks that have these protection but yeah it's just the two panels and that runs down to submersible pump um we're real high water table here we drill our wells to a hundred but there are you on top of the aquifer here yeah ogallala aquifer we're on the northern tip of it we have all kinds of a very high quality water not very deep so i think our as well as a hundred but we're probably hitting water at 50 right here okay and it's just got an overflow and it overflows in into our runoff dam and we like having that so that way there's never water pressure yeah or water pressure issues with the so the whole herd can come up here and everybody gets a drink and then and in the summer they can go in the water and cool down if they want to did they go in the water a little bit and cool down is it so is it constant flow there's always just a trickle coming through there well it would be that would be shooting out if we had sun right now there's oh yeah it runs faster it would launch out but oh you know then we don't have a battery on you can put battery it can run all night too if you have a big battery set with it okay but no it just runs when there's good sunlight this is one of our better ones it runs you know we have no sunlight right now and it's still running so yeah that's it's it's a good one this is kind of our standard for this area do you have issues with freezing at all in the winter here um yes it definitely freezes but what we do in the wintertime is we get the herds more in one area um so we we do have to feed our bison in the winter time we're not allowed to run on some of the tribal lands during the winter months so we'll feed one area then we'll just focus on we'll just have one water source room or two so they'll they'll the pressure from them just drinking and we always put you know where it runs out we always just put where the water runs out you know shoots out right where they'll be drinking so they constantly keep it open and then during the day water comes on and the other water just pops out so we don't have any power out here we don't have any heating but we do have to chop ice in the winter time okay can get old so yeah also for my buddy randy take note they were a lot of vests out here yeah you gotta have vests this is kind of standard operator which is your carhartt vest because you put on a big coat you jump in the tractor then you're hot then you jump out and you're fencing why don't you just have the heat off in the tractor all the time then you never have to bother with it like we do well you get claustrophobic you're kind of like john candy you know and trains get stuck in there and trying to get out you know so you don't want that there's your john candy reference of the day you do have to have a code if you can jump on a four-wheeler chase buffalo that's it can get a little cold yeah see so then what are you going to do you got to go back and get in the seat you know and shake the door just put the coat on scott how many active gates do you have on this farm active gates uh yeah there's 272 active gates we use that's what i was going to guess exactly that's that's kind of standard now what are we doing scott so we uh we made these salt heaters that's knowing the bison get is they get a little bit of cake usually when we move them um and then they have access to redmond salt all year round same stuff that you have in your salt shaker at home full of micro nutrients micros and minerals micros and minerals and then this these feeders are about the only thing that we've come up with that the buffalo will not destroy otherwise they just destroy everything else so yeah this is two and seven eighths wall pie with some uh just square tubing and then this is old conveyor belting that we just sell oh okay conveyor belt farmer engineering got out your leatherman i go for the side karate chop putting all three of them in here no just two just two looks like lowry's try some on your burger there's a windmill becky dandy that's the old school way of solar powering your water plus half windmills and half solar powers whenever these break down or go bad then we drop some first one tell me what we're looking at here so these were put in by surveyors would have been i don't know the exact year been late 1800s i think it was late 1800s early 1900s surveyors came around and plotted out all of the quarters so this is a quarter mark and it's got so it's a property line marking yep property line marketing and see it says indian allotment on because this would have been all reservation ground yeah this was put in so it's got the the number on it which which quarter it is because every quarter has numbers so this is the corner yeah we're in section we're in the corner of section 26 like 26 is out here 27 28 and this one would be i don't know i can't read that so this is a quarter this would be a section marker yeah a quarter but then it shows the quarter that's the sections that come off of it sure and so yeah i think this would have been most of these got pulled out because guys were running into them with their pickups and taking out their transmission but there's still a few left out here you just got to watch out for them but what year do you think that was put in it would have been late 1800s late 1800s so that's been there a while that's been there a while and it's been hit a few times supposed to be straight up in the air and they go they're about six foot in the ground and they're splayed out on the bottom so it's hard to pull out sure what are all the treats laying on the ground what are all the treats laying on the ground yeah oh yeah cow chips homemade pies chips yeah buffalo chips plenty of those if you need them i'm i mean no i don't need any all of our farm ground will be fenced within the next three to five years right now we're just in the process of it um but yeah this is all organic we've been farming organically since 1997 and we've done some uh crop grazing you know with our beef cows in the past but now we have the bison we're doing some without the bites too but we want to in the next three to five years have all of our acres be you know intermixed with the grazing and the organic farming together so you planted this after you harvested something here yep we harvested off uh what do we have here i think we had spring wheat here we harvested it off and we come in we planted winter wheat and it's usually it's a lot better but it hasn't it like since the end of july we haven't hardly got any rain no we can't believe it's as green as it is but so we'll graze this in the spring and bring the buffalo in graze it down and then we'll probably come in here after we graze it down with corn that's probably what we'll do okay and then how long will you graze this for it'll be quick like we'll we'll lock the herd in here and they'll be in here for just like a few days come in and mow it down and get out it'll be and you know we might run a little electric fence too and have them graze this hat for a couple days and a half for a couple days but that's our water source right over there we have a tire tank that's on a well over there but so we have this we'll do that the same with that that uh chunk of ground over there so these are your studs right here look at that guy he's he's itching himself best genetics his 930 ball here he was the dakota territory vice association uh young guns challenge he was the champ he was uh 18 000. whoo this bull right here that is that is millerton 934's name's miller you got a bowl named miller time yes oh yeah how much you need for him how much we made uh he's about 13 grand 13 grand yeah for him i'll just let you hang on to him he was uh not now miller time that's rude he's a third place champ 140 here he was the yearling champ he's in the back here yep that's jocko that's jocko yeah i know who he's named after and uh he was the denver yearling champion last year so these are your bulls this is this is your uh this is your stud pool here these are your genetics you're bringing in right so what we did is we sorted off all of our best heifers and cows and we sorted off our best bulls and we'll keep most of these back as breeding stock for the rest of the herd okay so they just run on this place it's about the the home place here is about the perfect size for running a genetics or you know there's about 150 females up here um and so we put these best bulls on to get the best heifers and the best bulls out of them to genetics wise so you know we're looking for like him we're looking for the depth the width oh yeah he's feeling good you know and size how they gain on grass we keep track of all that information um and uh same as looking for a a good stud in the cattle right so we were registered angus breeders um up until 2010 so we kind of brought that into the bison we want the best of the best and the high quality genetics directly correlates to high quality meat it just it is that not not all buffalo are created equal and so we we just strive for the best so that's cease got that bull right there with csun's tank he was the 2019 denver champion he's four he looks huge yeah he's our big boy he weighed after breeding season they get pretty run down during breezes they run pretty hard he weighed 1974 last week 1974. so they just finished breeding season yep they're well they they were done breeding season back in you know august okay you know earlier july they do mostly so you mix them in with the ladies over the summer yeah they get these they naturally separate but we just separate these because we just that way we can keep them out here you know they're not you know they don't really mess with the cows but they're not off causing trouble in the calvert so they just stay we they naturally separate when they're done breeding so we just lock them in you know and they run in these three pastures here just kind of all winter just hanging out being dudes how close did the bison come to being extinct do you know that no one really knows for sure but the the best estimate is there was down to like 700 to 1000 total animals in the world in the world do they live somewhere else or just north america no just north america i mean some people took them there's uh our partners our partner's family in dakota peter the hines they're they were involved in taking the first bison to uh to hawaii so there's some bison on an island in hawaii and they needed a vacation but yeah so they got down to 700 to a thousand animals and uh it's grown from that i've been in like the 20s so the genetic pool got so small that there's there's not as many higher quality animals as there is lower quality you know you know where it doesn't really matter you know they're running on state parks and stuff but yeah it got down it was close so yeah them being all gone so but then just through you know the best way to save a species and start eating it you know so sure that's in through market-based conservation um and the state parks and everything brought the brought the numbers back i think there's about a half million mice in north america now you guys ranching oh yeah ranching hard so this is my wife kate and my one-year-old son ted he's waving so like for dakota pure uh kate if you message dakota pure or whatever any horde he's putting it goes through kate so she's the one who takes her orders and usually ted's on her lap so he's taking orders too yeah ted is taking orders and uh general ranch boss is he driving though he always drives i feel a lot safer now he's been driving since he was a baby it's a long time ago now now we're talking now i no that's your seat oh he cheers you haven't done this in quite a while yeah i'll make sure i get it on on camera here that way the world can see it yeah that was pretty good still got it still got it grab one put it so now you spear the second one yep smear the second one and it'll carry it on the back yep we carry along with us oh there we go yeah we uh put up about seven or eight thousand of these round bales a year um most of it gets sold because you know now that we don't beef cows anymore the bison don't eat near as much we don't feed them for very long they only get fed for maybe two or three months out of the year why don't they eat as much because they're on more pasture no they're just more efficient on their their immune immune system what's the word i look for metabolism slows down in the winter time really so yeah they'll only eat about 20 pounds of hay where an old beef cow she'll eat you know she can eat up to 40 you know so so even though they're bigger animals they're not burning as many calories well the bulls are bigger the cows are smaller that's interesting i didn't know that you know it depends on yeah they're all different but you know our cows definitely weigh a thousand to oh a thousand to eleven hundred fifty maybe twelve hundred um where our old beef cows are black inks beef cows they were they weighed you know 1400 and up you know sure i'll never get over that view here the way you can just see for how far away are those those hills those ones are they're three and a half four visions over there are more like five or six that's a hell of a view and it's like magic we have an automatic net wrap taker offer automatic net wrap taker tucker it's a tucker takes that off he's back in because we don't want to spread any plastic out here right put that on and this is a second cutting grass and alfalfa tail pick her up it's just a baling roll that's all it is oh look at that doesn't really process it it just unrolls it spreads it out nope why spread it out so much why not just let them kick the bale apart well the the animal buffalo are extremely social they have a pecking order so we like to get it spread around so that the boss cows don't you know beat up on the cows and artists okay so that's kind of what i assume yep and then we also want to everywhere where we want you know to increase organic matter like here this is a place where we used to feed beef animals and now we're just grazing animals on it yeah grace and grass i like to spread it on these spots just to increase that organic matter sure it's not getting just be down anymore so the lunchroom's busy everybody's eating out here do you guys want to explain what dakota pure is and how you market these things so dakota pure bison is our family the osmonds at antelope creek bison so it's me and kate and ted and my uh mom and my dad mike and darla that's the heim family which they've owned bison their family's own bison since 1967. so they're so they've been doing this a long time they've been in the bison industry a long time they were very helpful when we first got in the industry yeah just a lot of tips and so we were just talking with them we're just talking with them we just uh we have about 900 females and they have about eight or nine hundred females and we're running you know some of the better animals on some of the best grass in the world we just didn't we didn't see why people everywhere couldn't enjoy bison meat um but you know we we have the animals and so our whole goal was just to start being able to produce we we already have the animals to get meat to everybody ship directly to their door so the highest quality meat you can get um and so we got to talking with them so we decided to launch dakota pure um so we we take both of our family's animals and we have them processed and boxed and shipped directly to everywhere in the lower 48 states you sent me a box yes and i ate it yeah with doritos with doritos yes and so our whole goal was our dakota pier's goal is to use these regenerative regenerative regenerative grazing practices um produce high quality meat and use do that using as many american hands as possible we just don't understand why people are eating meat and beef biscuits that's not from the united states sure so and do that while using as many americans possible getting america back to work that's that's just our whole goal so we teamed up with them and we learned how to create a website i learned how to create boxes which is a lot harder how to create boxes yeah are you whittling them yourself no i did not whittle them myself but what size to use all that and all that stuff um we ship you know we have four different size boxes all insulated dry shipped frozen free shipping free shipping so where where does somebody go to try to get some of this you can it's a link to our instagram but it's dakotapurebison.com and then we have uh sweatshirts and hats all made in the usa or we try to try to keep everything made in the usa as much as possible we will link that down below as you said it's dakotapurebison.com there you go okay bye ladies thank you enjoy your lunch is this a custom mirror scott that we actually did that ourselves all on your own did you have to youtube that or you just knew no we had to do this that's been handed down through the generations that's impressive

Channel: Millennial Farmer

Views: 593,339

Rating: 4.9577007 out of 5

Keywords: MAN ON A BUFFALO, Farm Tour, farm to table, BISON, BUFFALO, SD Ranch Family, millennial farmer 2020, farming, mn farmer, Millennial Farmer, millenial farmer, millennium farmer, mn millennial farmer, minnesota millennial farmer, mn millennial farmer 2020, Mn farmer podcast, mn millennial farmer funny, farmer, mn millennial farmer equipment, off the husk, mn millennial farmer harvest, john deere, farm equipment, Farm videos, welker farms, rancher, dairy farm, buffalo ranch

Id: m5txOetd844

Length: 31min 32sec (1892 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 30 2020