The Rural Voice, 1998-07, Page 28diet is sweetened with oats and barley
and some peas to get them ready for
market. Mostly, however, they turn
pasture and hay into meat in a
traditional way.
"If you take the meat from the
animals we raise and the animals
raised more in a feedlot manner you
can tell the difference just by looking
at it, even if it's ground up," says
Arlene.
Athree-year-old market animal
dresses at about 600-650
pounds. Despite the fact the
buffalo have a very heavy head
and a heavy hide, they still yield well
since they don't have as much trim as
cattle because they don't put on a fat
layer.
Buffalo meat prices are more than
double beef prices. One rule of thumb
is that a pound of buffalo is worth
about the same as a kilo of beef. The
Mountains sell their ground buffalo
meat for $4.50 per pound. Stewing
meat is $5.35 per pound. Sirloin buus
are $10.13 and tenderloins are $21 a
pound and in high demand.
Coming from a beef background,
Aaron didn't know what to charge
when he first got into the business.
He talked to a larger, veteran
producer who gave him a price list. "I
looked at the tenderloin. It was
$21.08 a pound and I thought 'how
can I ask this?' So I went to the Grey
Rose restaurant in Hanover and the
chef asked me `do you have any
tenderloin?' I thought 'Oh no, now
I've got to tell him $21.08 a pound."
But the chef, far from being startled
by the price, ordered all the
tenderloin Aaron had in stock.
"It's been that way ever since.
You can sell your top and your
bottom (cuts), but you might have to
24 THE RURAL VOICE
work to get rid of something like
inside rounds." Many producers help
each other meet demand by selling
product to each other, either whole
animals or specific cuts. Often, for
instance, a restaurant will want a
specific cut meaning there could be a
shortage of that cut, but a problem
getting rid of other cuts.
Marketing is a big part of buffalo
ranching, the Mountains say. Raising
the animal is only half the job — the
other is finding customers for your
product. For small producers in high -
traffic locations that may be as simple
as putting out a sign by the road. For
larger producers like the Mountains,
with little roadside traffic, it means
hustling the meat to restaurants and
consumers across the area.
Aaron generally looks for the top
restaurant in an area, then asks to
meet the chef, taking along samples.
"When Aaron walks into a
restaurant and looks at their menu
then he will suggest to them what
they should buy," says Arlene.
"When I see a chef I'll tell him
`You're going to like everything
about my product but the price',"
Aaron says. After this ice -breaker he
asks the chef to look over his price
list but not to order anything unless
he thinks he can make money from it.
After all, if they're going to have a
long-term relationship they both have
to make a profit, he says.
Also, because it might be hard to
provide a consis.tent supply, he
suggests starting with a special, rather
than adding it to the menu.
Restaurants are supplied with
different cuts than the consumer
market. "The chef wants the whole
tenderloin, the whole strip loin and
the whole sirloin." He wants to cut
In a miniature stampede, the
Mountains' herd rushes to get food.
the steaks to his own requirements.
The other side of the business is
the breeding stock market, says
Arlene, who is the secretary of the
Ontario Bison Association. "The
interesting thing with our industry is
that we have established a meat
market before we increased our
breeding stock. At this point in time
there's much more demand for the
meat than there is a supply, which in
turn raises the price of the breeding
stock because we can't fulfill this
demand."
The price of breeding stock has
been rising steadily since they
got involved in the business, he
says. Today six -month-old
heifer calves are regularly selling
from $4,000 to $6,000 each, even
more at specialty sales. At the recent
Wild Rose Classic Show and Sale in
Camrose, Alberta, one bull was sold
for a record price of $32,000 to an
Oklahoma buyer. The average price
was $6,595 for yearling bulls, up 75
per cent from last year's average
price. Top price for a heifer was
$15,200 paid by a Texas ranch for an
Alberta animal. The average of 18
animals offered was $6,639, up 29
per cent from last year.
While breeding stock prices are
high, the initial investment can be
paid back over a long period. Buffalo
live 30-40 years. The Mountains still
have producing cows that they
started with in 1984.
Buffalo really seem to be catching
on in Saskatchewan and Alberta.
Reversing the trends of the past,
western producers are now calling
east looking for breeding stock.
Faced with such a request, Arlene