Where the Buffalo Roam

In its commitment to offer customers the highest-quality products available, Natural Grocers by Vitamin Cottage continually strives to partner with family-operated, small-scale, sustainable producers. The following article is the first in a two-part series about sustainable buffalo ranches that meet, or exceed, our standards for naturally-raised meat. Natural Grocers is proud to support these ranches, their owners, and their products. In this article, we introduce The Buffalo Guys.

In the extreme northwest corner of Kansas, under a boundless blue sky and surrounded by vast prairie and farmland, sits Homestead Ranch, Ken Klemm's home and ranch. At first look, the ranch appears to be pretty typical -- a cluster of corrals for newly arrived livestock, plump chickens scratching around the yard, and rolling grassland as far as the eye can see. Pretty typical... until you see the buffalo.

I recently had the opportunity to visit Homestead Ranch, meet Klemm, and see his buffalo operation firsthand. After spending the afternoon with him on the ranch, I learned a few things: Klemm is really dedicated to ranching, his methods of ranching are genuinely sustainable, and without buffalo, the American West wouldn't be the same.

American bison (what we commonly call buffalo) have been an integral part of the Western landscape for thousands of years, sustaining early Native American cultures and helping to shape the ecology of the Western plains. Once numbering in the tens of millions, today the number of buffalo in the wild has dwindled to about 15,000 but ranchers like Klemm have started a sort of buffalo "revival."

"Buffalo are very independent, self-sufficient animals, and they fit the environment," Klemm explains why he chose to raise buffalo. "They are really just healthy and vibrant animals. I really respect the species; I don't know if I would ranch if I had to do it with cattle."

Klemm has been raising buffalo at his Kansas ranch for more than a decade, and with his friend and fellow rancher, Peter Thieriot, successfully launched The Buffalo Guys brand in 2000, the leg of the business through which they market the meat they produce. In 2006, Thieriot purchased the ranchland adjoining Klemm's, and they created Beaver Creek Buffalo Co., 3,500 acres of open rangeland where their herd of 750 buffalo roams. Their operation has grown to include 10 "contract" growers, all who must sign affidavits promising to follow The Buffalo Guys' strict holistic management specifications.

HOLISITIC RANCHING

Klemm practiced holistic management for close to 12 years on other ranches before he bought his own, so it was a no-brainer to use those same practices on his own ranch. "With holistic management, we look at the whole -- the land, the animals, the interplay with the minerals, the soil, and the water -- and we manage the whole in a way that's beneficial to everything. It just makes sense," Klemm says. "It makes the land so much healthier, the animals healthier, and it's more profitable. There's just no reason to not use those principles."

As part of their holistic management practices, none of Klemm's or Thieriot's animals receive growth hormones or growth promoters and antibiotics are never administered unless an animal is sick. "In the rare event that we need to doctor an animal, which hasn't happened since 2000," Klemm says, "we humanely administer the antibiotics and that animal is tagged and sold in a different way." Klemm explains that because they are allowed to practice their age-old habit of roaming large spaces in their natural habitat for most of their lives, the buffalo are able to maintain strong immunity. "They depend on their wild-animal immune systems to protect them from most illnesses."

Ultimately, The Buffalo Guys believe that the buffalo's independent nature must be respected and that they must remain as uninfluenced by man's interventions as much as possible. Therefore, the buffalo are allowed to breed on their own schedule and have calves in the open range where they are most comfortable. Additionally, the calves are never separated from their mothers until they are weaned naturally.

I was lucky enough to visit the ranch during calving season, and as we were observing the herd, Klemm pointed out a little calf having its first go at standing up under the watchful eye of its mother. He guessed it had been born about five minutes earlier, a rare surprise, Klemm said. In fact, there is such minimal contact with the buffalo that Klemm said in ten years of owning the ranch, he has only witnessed a handful of births.

"Buffalo are born here on the ranch, out on the pastures, and those little calves stay out on the ranch and grow up to be yearlings and then they actually spend another summer with their mothers," Klemm explains, "so they are here about a year and a half when they are brought into the finishing operations. At that time, usually October, they weigh about 700 pounds; when they're born they weigh about 35 to 40 pounds."

Those that are ready for finishing are sorted out of the herd and go into the finishing pastures where they are offered high-quality grasses. As they grow, the heavier ones are moved into finishing paddocks and offered cracked grain and alfalfa hay. Klemm explains that they will choose to eat either or both, balancing their diet to their own content -- they are never force-fed. Klemm explains that finishing with hay and grain guarantees a consistent quality of meat. The finishing process is anywhere from 60 to 90 days, depending on the animal.

After the animals are removed from the finishing paddocks, the paddocks are planted with a crop, which helps to incorporate the manure into the soil, using it as a fertilizer and preventing it from leaching into the water table. This method is called "folding." Folding helps keep the soil alive and healthy and benefits the animals; when they are brought to the paddock, they are on clean ground rather than the filth of conventional feedlots. "If we didn't do this, the land would become sterile and nothing could live there except for pests," Klemm says.

BUFFALO AND THE GRASSLANDS

While the buffalo depend on the grasslands to survive, so do the grasslands rely on the buffalo. "The grass needs to be grazed in order for it to be healthy and to maintain its vigor. It also needs to be grazed on a schedule that allows it to be rested. The buffalo are uniquely designed -- their psychology and their physiology -- that's exactly how they graze. They graze an area and then they move on." The edge of the buffalo's hooves, which are sharp, unlike cattle's rounded hooves, actually push the grass seed into the soil. "Buffalo come from a dry environment and that sharp hoof is really important for cutting the soil, breaking it up and allowing the seed to find its way into the earth," Klemm says. "All of those things interplay together and that's what built this grassland, that's what put who knows how many feet of topsoil here -- we're actually building topsoil with what we do here -- and storing carbon, and making the grasslands healthier and more diverse with different species of grasses."

Once a cattle ranch that was left barren from years of overgrazing, Klemm and Thieriot's ranch is thriving with more than 30 species of native grasses. "We've also seen indicator species move back in -- swift fox, eagles, prairie chickens -- these are all indicators of the health of the ecosystem."

THE OTHER RED MEAT

The Buffalo Guys' buffalo are robust and healthy animals, allowed to live on an open range, grazing the grasses they love for most of their lives. This makes for a healthier, happier animal, which translates into a healthy and tasty meat. Buffalo meat is low in calories and saturated fat and is a rich source of iron and protein. It is also high in the beneficial omega-3 fatty acids and conjugated linoleic acid (CLA), a fatty acid that has been shown in animal studies to hinder tumor growth and have anti-carcinogenic properties. CLA has also been shown to reduce body fat and promote lean muscle mass. In fact, buffalo meat is such a healthy choice that Klemm says he gets a lot of first-time customers through doctor recommendations to make the switch from beef to buffalo.

Buffalo meat tastes a little milder than beef and comes in the same cuts as beef. Buffalo meat does not have a wild or "game-y" flavor and can be used in place of beef in your favorite recipes; just remember that buffalo meat has less saturated fat than beef and tends to cook faster, so extra care must be taken to avoid drying it out by overcooking.

Once you begin eating this healthy meat, it may just become your red meat of choice. In any case, if you choose to buy The Buffalo Guys' brand, you can feel confident that you are buying from two guys who really care.

It is important to note that grilling meat creates a chemical reaction that produces heterocyclic amines (HCAs), chemicals that, when eaten, damage cell DNA and increase cancer risk. The good news is there are simple steps you can take to minimize HCAs. For example, the cherries included in the recipes here act as an antioxidant and significantly reduce HCA formation. Other antioxidants, such as vitamin E, have the same effect. Simply squeeze one 400 IU capsule of vitamin E into the meat or marinade and mix well (vitamin E oil has no taste). Additionally, the less "done" your meat is, the fewer HCAs (think medium to medium-rare).

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