Goodbye to a Refuge

Our Law Enforcement Officer let me close Thursday night so I could say goodby to all my favorite places.  I got Justin to lock the gate and left and hour early, since the sun is setting so early that it is dark before time for the gate to close.

I hiked up to High Point and waited for the sunset.  I was rewarded with a spectacular one.

Then Friday, I had to stop working on one last project to photograph a coyote.  And while I was loading my car, that evening, I had to grab my camera again to take a most amazing sun, that was almost a rose color amidst a swirling colored cloud.

And early Saturday morning, while I was finishing loading the car, I saw a vanquished bull elk walking tiredly down our road.  I quietly opened the door and ran for my camera.

So here are a few of my recent memories of the National Bison Range.

It was a great summer but now my thoughts are of meeting old friends and arranging my surgeries. Hope to get in some kinds of play while recuperating.

I am traveling to go see my old boss and friend, Cindy, with whom I worked and played while at Okefenokee.  I'll spend several days Dinosaur  NP before going to north Texas for a paddling party that will also last a long weekend.  Stay tuned. 

Roundup at National Bison Range

I'm still excited about getting to help with the Annual Bison Roundup.  It took me two years to experience it, because the government shutdown postponed it last year past my time to work at the National Bison Range. Two days of working 11 hours and 12 hours went by in a flash.

Now I'm ready to share it with you.  (But first get comfortable and get a cup of your favorite drink - this will take a while.)

The Roundup started up with a prayer offered by one of the leaders of the Salish tribe, followed by a song honoring the bison. 

Singers singing a song to honor the bison

When you watch our old movie of how the Bison Range is managed, you see cowboys on horses racing down a hill in a cloud of dust behind a thundering herd of bison.  Today we have found that using a vehicle to bring the bison from a holding pasture to the corrals puts a lot less stress on the bison and also protects the people from the kind of injuries they often got when on horses.

A small group of bison being herded with a jeep to the corral pen

After a small group of bison are brought into the corral, they are moved down through gates so they (usually) enter singly into a round enclosure where they are given a visual health check.

The round pen where the bison are checked visually for health before
being sent to the scale and having their microchip read

Then they are moved onto a scale built into the floor of the chute. Someone writes down the health check results and the weight, then a worker uses a wand to read the microchip in the animal's ear. This chip information is in a database so, the workers know whether this is a animal that is going to be sold, needs to be checked for disease, or will just go back on the range. (Which is true of most of the bison -  they are allowed to run down a chute to the holding pasture for animals that have been processed, with no further work done on them.)

Karen is recording all the data on the animal while Laura is writing down the health report -
they can read the weight off the scale from where they sit

The calves don't  yet have chips and have to get a complete workup which consists of giving a hair sample, a blood sample, getting a microchip and an ear tag.  Four drops of blood are put on special blotting paper after filling two tubes.  This is used to determine the calves' genetic markers. They are shunted into their own small squeeze chute. My afternoon job was to open a gate that shunted them into the chute, then close it again so the bison not needing any processing could run out to the field. 

Here is what is looks like when a calf gets into the squeeze chute. (Sorry - could not get my video to load to Blogger.)

Putting in a microchip behind a calf's ear. Guy on far side is pulling ear while Shay is injecting the chip at the base of the ear. 

Putting an ear tag on a calf 

A section of the chute can be opened to reach the tail - Shay has forceps ready to pull some hair

She grabs several hairs, rolls them around the forceps, pulls and then
puts them in a labeled plastic bag - we have a tiny printer that prints out the barcode for each animal

Kelsey is loading the microchips into the disk the machine uses 

Calves' blood samples with barcode labels that will be used for genetic profile

The same workup is done on the bison that are sold in closed bids, as well as to any bison who have lost their chips.  (The genetics workup will be matched with workups from years past to match the unique genetic pattern that represents the now unknown bison.  Thus the data associated with the old chip now will be associated with the new chip.)

Amy drawing a blood sample

 When the chip is read at the bison squeeze chute, it tells us which of several numbered pens we are to send the bison to. It also tells us what to do to the bison.  This included adding an ear tag for bison that were being sold, and taking blood. We also took about 30 nose swabs, to make sure our herd didn't have mycoplasma (Mycoplasma bovis) which recently has become a major concern on bison ranches with losses of 25% or more of the infected animals. And we also get labels printed with the chip number to put on hair bags, blood and swab samples.

I numbered these tags - they are glued to the animal and left on the ones that are being sold but are taken off after the animal has had further processing but will go back on the range

My morning job was to get blood from the syringe into two vacuum tubes, the swab into a preservation fluid in a test tube, and get the labels on everything.

This is NOT a Q-tip I'd like up my nose - testing for mycoplasma

While all this is going on, we are also giving an educational program to a series of busloads of kids from the surrounding schools.  Monday I helped with that and was the person who greeted the busses and explained what the kids would be doing, then escorted them to a movie about the roundup.  The other half of the day, I worked in the kids activity section where they could play a matching game by picking up the name of an animal, then finding a picture, a physical object, such as a pelt, or antler, the picture of the track made by the animal, and a factoid about it.  When they found all their matches, they brought them to me for review.  Then I would send them to scatter the cards and objects back around on the tarp.

We also had the bones from a bison so the kids could lay them out to see how the skeleton fit together.  Our bison had had the side of its face broken and then had healed up from this injury.  The bones were mostly numbered and there was a key provided, so the kids could figure out how the bones fit together and compare the bison's bones with their own.

Rebuilding a bison skeleton

One last interesting thing I learned today is that our herd of bison have some unique genes - ones that ONLY occur in our herd.  Those are part of the rare genes, that if we find them in individual, we keep it on the refuge to preserve genetic diversity.  We have no idea of what physical properties these genes are responsible for, but they may help our bison survive in a changing world. 

Roundup Preparations

The pace of work is picking up as we, and visiting helpers, rush to get everything in place for Roundup which happens Monday and Tuesday.  The bison have to all get to the holding area from where they will be brought down to the corals, the corals have to have modifications and upkeep finished, the old slaughter house has to get cleaned up - and pigeons cleared out, the generator and extra restrooms brought in, the packs of materials needed for the Roundup readied, and the food and drinks for the volunteers organized. The Visitor Center people are also getting the educational materials ready to use with the many school groups that are coming.

My jobs have involved cleaning, sorting, packing, and painting. I still have green fingers from painting several plywood panels which were attached to a tall fence made of drilling pipe.  I think this is to hide people from the bison calves as they come out of the squeeze chute.  I'll know more after seeing the roundup in action.

First  paint job included a lot of touchups and this metal door. 

The most exciting part of the preparations was the bringing in of the bison. I got to go watch the riders get their horses ready, haul them to the furthest place large numbers of  bison were grazing, then watch the start of the drive.  Other staff and volunteers were hunting down the bison before hand.

My boss, Amy, getting her horse ready while other helpers chat

Frances walks off a little of his horse's excitement before putting him in the trailer

Amy is ready to go but has to wait on the guys to finish tacking up

Frances walks off a little of his horse's excitement before putting him in the trailer

Amy is ready to go but has to wait on the guys to finish tacking up

At the start of the roundup

Marlin and his horse are both looking for bison - but is that an old bull sneaking away behind them?

A group of bison moving way ahead of the horsemen - red calf - less than two months old

Dean and Brent ride across what looks like endless prairie

Behind bison on the move

The pronghorns were interested in the bison and the horseman,
when they were still very distant

Then I drove back to the corals and waited for the end of the drive, when almost 400 head of bison came running through a gate and into the field where I was sitting in my truck.

The end of the drive with the drivers now close behind the bison and yelling. 

These bison are right outside my truck and are in the right field to easily retrieve for Roundup

The bison were moved Friday morning.  I worked all day Thursday on cleaning, Friday afternoon on painting, most of the day Saturday on painting and will have a few hours of painting left for Sunday plus I'll be helping other people. Then we'll start at 6:00 A on Monday to have everything ready for the Roundup to start at 8:30 A. M. 

Season of the Elk

The elk are in their rut and have been putting on quite a show for the last several weeks. ( Elk ruts can last up to twelve weeks, depending if young elk are breeding - they become breeders later than do older elk.)  Elk are the second largest members of the deer family - moose are the largest - and are very beautiful to watch. Their bugle includes a grunt at the beginning, which can only be heard a fairly close distances,  and a whistle at the end. Their rut period lasts up to twelve weeks.

The largest males are extremely stressed from having to defend their harems from marauders.  Our most dominant male now has a herd of about 30 cows and calfs.  He spends most of his time keeping his harem together and moving from one end of the harem to the other bugling out his warnings to get lost, NOW.

The other evening, while closing the refuge, I found two young males fighting through a cross fence.  Then a big male came their way.  The  young male on the same side of the fence suddenly had an important appointment elsewhere. However the young male on the far side of the fence kept talking trash. I didn't stay to see the outcome of this encounter.

For the last few days, the most dominant male is holding his harem behind the visitor center. I had good enough light on this morning, to get pictures of him defending his harem and chasing off a younger male.

Bull with part of his herd.  He patrols constantly and will push his harem closer if
another bull comes near

It takes a lot of work to get and keep the girls

Warning bugle

He has tightened up the harem - notice the calves

Then he had to chase off a competitor ....

into the staff parking lot

Where the inttruder takes a breather - all those puncture wounds gotta hurt

Another bull from a week ago, at Mission Creek

His harem was smaller

There is hardly time for eating - the bulls are watching, walking, bugling, and herding females

Another wanna be

On a personal note, we are all rushing to get ready for Roundup.  My jobs today included going to town and picking up supplies for cleaning, doing the biological work on the bison, and painting. I also used 4 gallons of bleach to disinfect a large room in the old slaughter house that has been invaded by pigeons.  (Thankfully, this was the third cleaning - I bless Bob for doing the really dirty cleaning. ) We'll be using the room to centrifuge the blood samples we'll take from the calves.  It was too windy to clean the bathrooms that are full of dead bugs, so I plan on doing that very early tomorrow,  as well as sweeping and rinsing the room I worked on today.  I also have to paint some new parts in the coral tomorrow or Friday and work in the Visitor Center a few hours.

I'm not going to be very regular with my blogs for the next few weeks since I'll be leaving here next weekend and going to visit my old boss and friend, Cindy. for whom I worked at Okefenokee, at Dinosaur National Monument, and then will be heading to Texas for a long paddling weekend with lots of my friends at Caddo Lake. But eventually I'll get time to edit pictures, write blogs and get back on the Internet.

But I will tell you all about roundup before I leave here.