bison roundup | The Prairie Ecologist

Guest Post by Eliza Perry, one of our Hubbard Fellows. All photos are by Eliza.

Anne and I have been spending a lot of time with bison over the last four weeks, something neither of us ever thought we’d do. First, we went four hours northwest to TNC’s Niobrara Valley Preserve, our largest property in the state and home to two herds of bison. We were there to help with the roundup of the east bison herd. I didn’t grow up around livestock, so this event was really thrilling for me. Because they are herd animals, bison can get very aggressive just by being separated from the pack, leading to a lot of banging and even some blood. Corrals are designed to safely and efficiently move livestock to minimize their stress. The hope is that the less time they spend inside the corral, the less stressed and agitated they will become and the fewer injuries they will sustain. We didn’t know how to help at first, but soon got the hang of closing the heavy iron gates at just the right moment to allow a manageable number of animals to clamor through the corral system at one time. We must have done okay because we were invited back to a second round up.

Hundreds of bison were milling around nervously, kicking up dust and being extremely photogenic.

This calf, like all the others, jumped free of the squeeze table the moment the
gates opened up. Each calf gets sexed, dewormed, vaccinated, and if female, tagged
and branded by age. Don’t worry, I was safe behind a gate taking this picture,
though all of the animals eyed me as they made a run for it straight at me.

A little too eager! (The rope is for closing the gate, it isn’t attached to the bison.)

In their haste, the bison ripped out a strip of metal that then cut them as they exited the corral. It took nothing more than some on-site welding, a sledgehammer and teamwork to quickly fix it.

The Fellows take a break on the catwalks of the corral system. (Eliza on the left, Anne on the right.)

Next we drove four hours northeast to visit TNC’s Broken Kettle Grasslands Preserve, Iowa’s largest contiguous prairie, to see how another preserve operates and lend a hand for a few days. Emily Hohman, the preserve’s land steward, showed us around and taught us to winterize fire equipment, which will be important at home after we finish our fall burns. Emily is in charge of stewardship for all of western Iowa, including the management of Broken Kettle’s bison herd. We discussed the challenges of managing large preserves with limited staff in a primarily production-oriented setting, circumstances that we at Platte River Prairies are very familiar with. We also got to whip around in the loess hills on six-wheelers while herding cattle.

Fortunately, cattle are afraid of people so you can gently steer them where you need them to go by simply blocking their path, which is what Anne is doing in this photo. Sometimes they get confused or feisty and that’s when you have to dash after them to both create distance between you and be where you don’t want them to be.

On our way back from Iowa we stopped by the Niobrara Valley Preserve again for a board meeting, this time without seeing any bison. But the next week we were back to round up the west herd for a few more days. We got to use the newer corral system, which has several hydraulically controlled gates for an even safer and more efficient sorting process. Because we had already learned the ropes (no pun intended) at the last roundup, Anne and I were able to jump right in.

The evening before the board meeting at the Niobrara Valley Preserve, the staff and trustees met up in the nearby town of Ainsworth for some dinner and socializing, which meant I got to drive through the Nebraska sandhills at sunset. My camera can’t capture how epic this landscape looked at this time of day. It’s nothing like any other place I’ve ever seen.

The Nebraska sandhills at sunset.

Last week, I got to help our Niobrara Valley Preserve staff round up and sort bison from the Preserve’s east bison pasture. Ok, I actually only helped with the sorting part because the bison were already in the corral by the time I got there…

Richard Egelhoff, our bison manager, had decided that, even with good grass regrowth this fall, we were going to have to reduce the herd size in order to get them through the winter. His plan was to sort off the yearling and two-year-old bison and keep the rest. Many of bison to be sold would have been sold anyway, but not until November. Richard hopes that shipping them off early will save enough forage to keep the rest of the herd fed. In total, the east herd was reduced from 475 animals to 355.

The corral system for the east bison herd is essentially a series of gates along a chute. The process starts by moving a group of bison from the larger corral into the chute. Once there, gates are opened and closed to let a few bison at a time down the chute until they are finally winnowed down to a single animal (or a few of the same kind). At that point, Richard opens one of two gates at the end, and the bison either goes left (back to the pasture) or right (into the sale pen).

If you’ve ever been to similar event with a corral full of cattle, it’s a noisy dusty mess. With bison, it’s dusty (especially in a drought) but not noisy. Bison mainly communicate with a series of low grunts. Because of that, there’s no loud bawling of mothers and calves or bellowing of bulls – just the pounding of lots of bison feet on the dirt, accentuated by grunts and the occasional BANG of a gate. It can be a violent process at times, as bison ram into each other or into gates – they ARE wild animals, after all – but we tried to get them through as quickly and calmly as we could. They’re amazingly tough animals.

The bison were pushed down to the corral last Wednesday afternoon and the sorting was finished shortly after lunchtime on Thursday, so the “keepers” spent less than a day in the corral before they were back in their pasture. The bison selected for sale were run through the chutes one more time on Friday morning so the neighborhood vet could check their tag numbers (little clips on their ears) or add a tracking number to any that were missing one. That number is required to be on any animals moved across state lines so that a buyer can track health records for each individual animal.

Now if we can get a few more rains, maybe we can grow enough grass to keep those bison happy and healthy until next spring. By then their 7,200 acre pasture should have plenty of grass again. Come on rain!

Below is a series of photos from last week’s roundup. You can click on an image to see a larger version of it, then click on the arrows to move through the remaining photos. When you’re done, just close the window by clicking on the X in the top left corner. To see more on this subject, click HERE to see a short story from the Omaha World Herald, along with fantastic photos and video by Alyssa Schukar.