"Olivers" > wrote in message
...

<much snippage>

> Buffalo's really not that bad,

Buffalo is actually an excellent tasting, tender meat, I prefer it to beef.
It is also lower in fat and unlikely to have been adulterated with
antibiotics etc. The original organic meat on the hoof <grin>.

>but there's a critical problem with raising
> buffler....when the wind sets in from the North, the buffler head South,
> and yo'everyday three strand/cedar post barbed wire fence ain't goona slow
> them big sumbitches down. The amount/type/strength of fencing and
handling
> equipment need to pasture and handle buffalo adds substantially to their
> cost. Then there's time and conversion factors. Today's beef cattle can
> be shipped off to the lot and fattened for market quickly and with a
> moderate amount of feed in a pounds in/pounds out basis.

I have never looked closely to the fencing on the buffalo ranches up here, I
will have to stop on my next trip down to Edmonton. I do know they dot the
landscape with fair regularity these days, even small Mom & Pop kinds of
operations of 4 or 5 head.

> Buffalo grow to a different equation. I wouldn't pass up a "Chateaubriand
> of Bison", but that tenderloin is gonna cost a lot more than prime, up
> there in the range with Kobe beef....

Actually that is a fallacy, at least in Alberta. I pay about a 10 - 20%
premium for buffalo meat at my butcher. I can get it for less from a direct
supplier. T-bone buffalo is about $23.00/kilo, T-bone beef is about
$19.00/kilo on an average day. Not counting grocery store sale prices on
the beef of course.

How do you get buffalo out in your area? Direct from the rancher or through
a 3rd party?

> Just as with the ostrich and emu crap, there's a limit to what folks will
> pay - and that damn emu tastes like dry sawdust anyway.
>
> TMO

I have never tried Ostrich though I have seen it in the local health food
store freezer. I have heard you need to be very careful in preparing it due
to the extreme lack of fat.

Janet