Let’s start with some interesting facts to consider:

375,000: Estimated buffalo herd size in North America today.

69,000: Approximate number of buffalo harvested in the U.S. and Canada for the entire year in 2020. (By contrast US Beef slaughters about 125,000/day).

20 percent of buffalo brought to market are grass finished.

80 percent of all buffalo in North America are finished on a diet of grains like corn, wheat, barley, and oats.  This is not their natural diet.

Grass fed and finished buffalo have a much lower Average Daily Weight Gain (ADG) than grain-fed animals.  Therefore, grass-fed slaughter weights are lower, and consequently the cost per pound of meat is higher.

Maintaining and managing quality native prairie grass pasture is far more difficult and expensive than feeding a grain byproduct in a barren feedlot. All things considered it costs a lot more to produce a pound of grass-fed buffalo than it does grain finished buffalo.

Supply and demand affects the market price for buffalo set by the USDA, and so do other inflationary costs(diesel fuel up 200% and quality hay up by 50% since 2020) associated with raising an animal and ending up with a consumer ready - packaged product.

Wholesale Costs

Grain-Fed Wholesale prices, animals from both the United States and Canada are posted on the USDA National Monthly Bison Report.  For the average cost for previous year ending September 2022, the average hanging hot weight (HHW) of a 24–30-month-old buffalo bull was 679 pounds which brought an average of $390.52 per 100-pound weight (CWT). This translates into a wholesale cost of $2,651.63 per animal.

The USDA does not keep track of wholesale sales of whole grass-fed buffalo as there are so few that come to market.

Since the amount of actual packaged saleable meat would be about 300-320 pounds, the average wholesale cost would be $8.84 per pound of buffalo meat, excluding the costs of processing, labels, and other packaging, marketing and overhead costs. Considering processing, packaging, inspecting and transportation costs alone average $938/1000lb animal, which equals $3.13 per pound of buffalo meat bringing the total wholesale cost to $11.97.

To further understand the costs, it is also important to understand the quantity of salable meat of a buffalo is roughly 35% of the total live weight of the animal. We typically harvest animals that are between two and three years of age.  An average 1,000-pound live bison breaks down to the following:

55% of live weight = a 550-pound carcass (Hot Hanging Weight)

35% of live weight = 300-350 pounds of meat

20-24% of live weight = 240 pounds becomes ground meat

Our Production Costs must also be Considered

Then, there are the very real expenses necessary to run a ranch business.  This includes the fixed ranch expenses, ranch mortgage, property taxes, insurance, equipment, vehicles, fencing & corral maintenance, utilities, infrastructure maintenance, fuel, feed for the buffalo, infrastructure repairs & maintenance, veterinary services, and in our case salary for only one full time ranch hand.  In our small “one-man operation” for the previous 12 months ending September 2022, our operating expenses were $137,408, or $11,450/month.  This figure does not include large capital expense items that are depreciated over the life of the item.

These real expenses must be passed on and added to the cost per pound of meat sold in order for our operation to stay in business.  Take the USDA wholesale price, add meat processing costs, then add our ranch operation costs, and we need to sell an average one pound of meat for no less than $16.50 to break even.

Conclusion

We produce and sell premium grass-fed buffalo meat as efficiently as possible.  We prioritize our buffalo herd welfare and try to be the best stewards and caretakers our prairie land could possibly have.  It is not economically feasible to sell a product below what it costs to produce the product.  We know we cannot compete in price with large grain fed operations, however, we are committed to offering premium grass-fed bison at a fair price.  We hope this explains how we calculate our costs when we price our grass-fed buffalo meat for sale.