Buffalo Dan's Bison

One man's quest to ranch American bison in Virginia.

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For those of you who are unfamiliar with agricultural equipment, a cultipacker is an implement used to compress soil. There are several reasons a farmer may use a cultipacker, but, for me, the primary purpose for the cultipacker is to pack down soil that has just been planted with grass seed. This should greatly improve seed germination in newly planted bison pasture. Five truck tire rims welded together form the shape of the cultipacker. Technically this is really more of a cultipacker-roller hybrid as the ridged portions on the roller should be more closely spaced on a true cultipacker. A thick piece of steel tube runs through the center of the rims, which I'll explain later in this post. For added weight each tire rim was filled with concrete after it was welded in place. A photograph of the roller portion of the cultipacker completed and waiting for the concrete to cure. The length of steel tube that runs through the center of the...

Front-end loader mounted t-post installer

Since we started fencing the perimeter of our ranch in 2014, I've strove to increase the rate at which I am able to fence an area. Among the most recent improvements has been a t-post pusher which is mounted to our tractor's front-end loader bucket. This device is very simple, but has already saved us countless hours of work. The following photographs illustrate how I use the post pusher. Aiming: The loader is first positioned with the end of the pusher is close to the ground. I then maneuver the tractor until the end of the pusher is in alignment with the marked post location. This is how the lined up pusher looks from the driver's seat of the tractor. Yes, I know the loader has an issue with the hydraulics cover. Loading: Once the pusher is aligned, I place the tractor in park, raise the loader arm and insert a t-post into the open end of the pusher. Tilting: Correct placement of the t-post is dependent al...

Fixing H brace tension wires

When I was first installing the fence I built H braces that used the traditional method of tensioning the wire component of the H brace with a twist stick. The twist stick is simply a stick placed between wires wrapped horizonally around the brace and twisted round and round causing the wires to wrap around each other. This, in turn, makes the wires shorten lengthwise, which creates the desired tension in the H brace. This tensioned wire is critical to the strenth of the brace. When you've finished twisting the stick there is a lot of tension on it to the point the if you let it go the force of the wires untwisting would send the stick whipping around and probably give you a good wallop in either the face or the crotch depending on where you stood. To keep this from happening you place the end of the stick not engaged in the wires against the horizonal bar of the H brace and use a short length of wire to anchor it there. Then you're free to stre...

Building an H-brace for a bison fence

Note: this is a very old post I found in my drafts that I didnt get around to finishing. I'm publishing it today but it's actually several years old. For my bison fences I use what is called an H-brace to reinforce the ends and corners of the fences. Here is the process I follow to make an H brace. Pictured above are three posts installed that will become the corner of a fenced area. This corner will consist of two H braces when done. The first step after installing the posts is to install the horizonal wooden beam of the brace. Before I can raise the crossbeam I must drill holes in the two for the brace pins used to hold the beam. Brace pins are steel rods about a quarter inch thick and 10 inches long. Here is me drilling the first hole. Now the other post. Next I trim the crossbeam to the distance between the two posts. The handsaw was dull so I switched to a chainsaw. Next I push the brace pins through t...

Clearing new fenceline

A map showing the planned fence addition area with a red and blue dotted line. The red portion indicates planned fence line area which has been mostly cleared of trees and brush and the blue indicates area ready for fence installation. For reference, the white line is the property boundary line, the white circles are the posts of our temporary electric fence, and the closely spaced yellow circles are permanent fence. Aside from clearing trees for more pasture my other primary task has been continuing the fencing of our ranch. Last year new fencing enabled us to give the bison access to 10 more acres of land and this year we hope to add an additional 27.8 acres of land. Today I managed to completely finish preparing a 640 foot long section represented in the above map by the blue dotted line at the bottom of the image. Below are some photographs of this section. This is the first section of future fence line measuring 675 feet long. To ...

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Mapping hay deployments