Buffalo Roam On Family Farm In Rutland, Massachusetts

A special festival will be held on Sept. 15 and 16 on the Alta Vista Farm.

Buffalo Roam On Family Farm In Rutland, Massachusetts

In a breathtaking view along a country road in Rutland, Massachusetts, a herd of American bison dots the landscape amidst rolling hills and serene pastures.

The buffalo belong to the Mann family who bought the centuries-old farm in 1951. They named the farm “Alta Vista,” meaning “high view.”

Folks are welcome to come look at the buffalo and enjoy the peaceful surroundings year-round at no cost. In warm weather, people bring a lunch and sit at picnic tables or spread a blanket on the grass, while children feed the fish or take a pasture ride into the middle of the herd.

The farm store sells Buffalo roasts, steaks, ground meat, jerky and miscellaneous cuts along with American Indian crafts and bison related items.

Howard and Nancy Mann live and work on the farm and operate the store below the farmhouse. Their son, Steven, and his wife, Asa, work with them and live nearby.

The Manns purchased their first two bison from South Dakota in 1968 and maintained a small herd of five to ten of the animals for the next 20 years.

As health conscious Americans began cutting down on fat and cholesterol, demand for bison increased because the meat is much leaner and more nutritious than beef. In addition, bison are raised without growth stimulants, hormones or antibiotics. Bison has been called the “nutritional red meat alternative.” As a result, in 1993 the Mann family sold their beef herd and concentrated on raising only bison. Today their herd numbers 121.

An estimated sixty million Buffalo once roamed the North American continent. The Plains Indians relied on the massive animal for food, clothing and shelter. Westward expansion and the railroads contributed to the wholesale slaughter of the animals until fewer than a thousand were left on the continent by the 1880s. Today, there are around 250,000 bison in the United States on farms, ranches, state and national parks, and the number is growing.

Massachusetts News asked Steven Mann why bison has not replaced beef since the meat is superior. Mann explained that it is much more difficult to raise bison because they are wild animals. He compared it to raising a wolf instead of a domesticated dog. Bison require much stronger and more costly handling facilities, and the animals are much more expensive, while the market for the meat is much smaller.

Mann said when a bison is handled or transported, it acts like any wild animal when it knows it’s trapped, and looks for any way out using all its strength.

The meat processing for Alta Vista Farm is done at a federal facility. Mann said many facilities are not set up to handle bison. “When you’re dealing with a 2,000 pound breeding bull at five years old, it takes a lot to keep that boy under control so nobody gets hurt.”

Mann said bison hurt more people than any other wild animal in the United States because of their contented appearance. “You think that you could just walk over there and pet them and scratch them and have your picture taken. They are nothing like that at all. For the most part, ninety percent of the animals out there will back away from me if I walk towards them.”

Mann doesn’t walk into the pasture. He said he takes the tractor or a truck or keeps something two feet away he can jump into for safety. “There are about ten animals out there that wouldn’t think twice about sticking a horn through me,” he said. “If you approach one of those ornery bison,” said Mann, “it will back up, raise his tail, and have a look on his face a dog gives you when he bares his teeth and is about to attack.”

Alta Vista Farm sells all their meat retail from their own store, as compared to the western ranches that sell it to a co-op, which then distributes it. Customers come to Rutland from a fifty-mile radius.

Mann said some people ask why they slaughter the bison as opposed to just raising them, considering the animal was almost extinct at one point. “There is no money in just raising them. You have to have an end-game, and that is the meat market,” said Mann.

He pointed out, however, that since bison meat became popular in the nineties, the national herd keeps growing and growing. That is because you need more females to get more males to get more meat, because only the males are slaughtered for meat.

“The bulls I use are two-and-a-half years old. The cows that we have out here produce the calves. The calf crop is fifty-fifty, half male and half female. The females we generally will sell off to another producer someplace as replacement heifers, and the bulls we retain here and use for the meat supply when they are between two and three years old. We replace the breeding bulls every few years so you have a changeover of blood. My oldest cow is about twenty-six years old. She just had a calf last week. So as long as you are producing a calf for me each year, you are going to stay here until old age takes over.”

A female who doesn’t produce gets shipped out to become a hamburger or hot dog, said Mann. He said he doesn’t cut steaks from anything older than three years.

The Alta Vista Farm will be hosting an annual festival on September 15 and 16, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. called “Bison Days.” The event has grown in the last five years to about two thousand visitors.

From Rutland Center, take route 56 South towards Paxton for one mile. Turn left onto Prescott Street. Go straight for two miles. (Road will change to Hillside Road.) Alta Vista Farm is on the right. (508) 886- 4365.