Anyone want the ultimate homestead bovines? I have a seven year old yak cow and her six month old heifer calf I will part with for $1500 or best offer the pair. They live 25 years like a horse, not 10 like a regular cow. And they are the hardiest cattle ever! I'll do payments, especially if you are anywhere in Oregon or Washington. Bring a horse trailer, and pick them up in Sheridan, Oregon (1 hr S. of Portland), where I rent pasture for them. They are all the animals I have anymore. We only want to raise a few small animals and move on to new skills, like growing our own vegetables on a small plot we're moving to.

I have had yaks since 1997. I had them on a snowy off-grid 40 acres and they were the hardiest critters. They are also not a headache to fence and deal with, like bison can be. There was a bison ranch nearby & when the herd decided they didn't want to be in five strands of barbed wire, they'd just go! They crossed the river one time!

Yaks are a different creature. I've kept a young yak bull temporarily behind a cross fence of only twine! He was alright! (I'd recommend keeping the older bulls, like any bull of any breed, behind barbed wire, though, especially when there are ladies separated from them.) They are smart for bovines. They scrape up forage from under snow. They cross with regular cattle, producing a fertile female and infertile male, which doesn't matter if you're going to butcher the extra cull males anyway. The cross females have hybrid vigor.

Yak bulls on regular cattle is the way you get the best crossbred beef. Cows can be bred by regular bulls, but the bulls shouldn't be big Holsteins, just my opinion, since the cows are smaller (900lbs.) Half-yak has the fat of chicken, and is fine grained, like the choicest beef, with a deep red color from all that extra hemoglobin the yaks carry in their blood to live at 15,000 + feet altitude in their homeland, the Roof of the World, Tibet. We & our friends love the beef so much! What we didn't keep we sold for $4.25/lb and up.

Yaks have been domesticated by man for 5000 years, used for sherpa pack animals, and so on. There are very few yaks in North America, only in the low 1000s, but they'll be more popular. There will always be a group of people who like the manageability, good beef, cold tolerance, and thrifty feed conversion. And, they have cashmere-like underwool you comb in a squeeze chute in spring or collect from the pasture. That wool sells for good $$.

All there is on the Tibetan mountain slopes where yak graze in summer are rocks and a few tufts of wiry grass. My yaks preferred weeds to hay much of the time! A regular cow eats three times as much for the same feed conversion. Like I said, they are really thrifty.

They are fun. They put their horsey tails up in the air when they trot along. They have really nice hard hooves and less foot trouble in stony places than regular cows. They are quiet and make a low grunt instead of mooing! They are usually black in color, that's what my cow is, with a white star and hind socks. Her heifer is the same. The cows are smaller than males, females are around 900 lbs., bulls around 1200-1600 lbs.

Questions? Ask away. I love yaks. I wish I could provide transport for anyone who wants them but I sold my horse trailer. By the way, I know of several yak raisers if you want to start a collection!

-- Catherine (constancy@la.com), October 14, 2001

Answers

Another possibility with freezer Yaks is to have their hides tanned into a rug or wall hanging. I sold a Hereford one on eBay for $90.

-- Ken S. in WC TN (scharabo@aol.com), October 14, 2001.

Ken, that's a good idea. It's sad to waste the hide. I have a bull hide with hair on I'd sell, from an extra bull we culled and butchered.

They bring a good price if consigned to a catalog. I'm too lazy to do the work to get the hide I have into a catalog, and not desperate to sell it. It's beautiful on a full size bed. Yak hides have long hair skirts. People pay $1000+ retail for them from those specialty "lodge decor" catalogs. (Like buffalo robes). The best "yak robes" are the ones with the winter coat on. It's luxurious.

-- Catherine (constancy@la.com), October 14, 2001.