Water Buffalo vs Beef cattle: The Shocking Differences

This right here is a perfect example of why I would never personally consider having water buffalo. But look at how cute she is. If it's not quite obvious yet, we're going on another little farm ranch tour here. So we're here at Beyond Organics. It's roughly 4,000 acres of organic water buffalo and cattle. So we're going to go meet the man of the hour here and see if we can link up with him. There we go. There we are. There he is, already waiting for us. Good morning. This is Mr. Michael Detweiler. Nice to meet you. Trinity. That's my 17-year-old. Yes, I was here last time. I'm Deanne. That's Deanne. Good to meet you. That's my 23-year-old daughter. I'm Alex. Alex, good to meet you. Alex, my maybe daughter-in-law one of these days. Oh, OK. Working on it. And Grayson. Grayson. And Tristan behind the camera. Tristan behind the camera. Good to meet you. And Fun Face, my wife. Kelly. Good to see you again, Kelly. You guys know each other. So we are only about six or seven miles from where we live. Yeah. Straight down the highway we live off of on this beautiful, beautiful ranch. So Mr. Detweiler is going to give us a tour today. Tell us all the ins and outs. I'm going to question him to the ends of the earth. I hope I can answer 10% of them. I'm going to annoy you with the questions. That's OK. That's good. I try to stump. That's good. That won't be hard. That'll be fine. That won't be hard. So maybe I didn't ask you or maybe I don't remember. What is your official title here? Director of Agriculture and Outside Operations slash Ranch Manager slash everything else. All right. Perfect. Almost from CEO to handyman. Everything in between. I don't know. CEO and CO, those are my operations. The handyman, yes. All right. I'll take that one. All right. Let's load up. So we're going to split up. Yeah. Iced coffee. Lots of sugar. Lots of beans. All the coffee. Good job, little date man. Smile. We just help him carry it. He carries it. You can have white. You can have blonde. You can have light brown. You can have black. Really? OK. Normal variance. The dark black with the larger, a little more pinny, a little more Holstein looking. That's a riverine. That's more of a dairy type. And then you'll see some of the ones that are a little thicker in the rear end, a little bit shorter, might have white socks. That's a swamp type. That's more Thailand. Really? OK. That's a buffalo. When I first got here, they said, well, swamp and riverine don't cross. Well, we haven't had any problems. No problem. No. But, you know, buffalo will not cross to the cattle. They have more chromosomes than a beef cow. OK. So it's buffalo exclusive. But we're trying to sell, since our end point is for meat production, we're focusing on trying to shorter, deeper, more fleshy buffalo. OK. Bulls and cows. OK. But we still have some of those dairy types, which are a little taller, a little more pinnier. So you're trying to follow the guidelines of basically beef. I mean, smaller, more compact. Do you also selectively breed for finer bone, or is it just frame score? I don't think you're going to find bone of buffalo. Yeah. They're probably too little. Thick bone. I mean, you get into, well, we'll see some of the lower. Well, your carcass yields, I think we talked about this before, they're low, right? They're low. Yeah. Just because there's so much bone, so much hide, so much... What are they like? More like 50%? Where a beef is 65? 64? 42%? That's a lot of bone and hide and dirt and horn. When... I could never find international work that said, hey, this is your percentage. So the guy that I have slaughtering my buffalo, I'm like, would you mind if we weighed everything off a few of these things? And 42, I think I had one at 44. I had one at lowest 38. Oh, my God. Yeah. So it's... You're growing bone and hide? Pretty much. Wow. OK. So I would assume, I think like maybe a lot of folks who know a little bit about animals, that these water buffalo, considering they come from Asia predominantly, right? Great. They're going to be incredibly heat adaptive. I mean, they're going to handle heat like no one's business. If they have water. And that is the caveat. So this is something I learned last time I was here. Had no clue. I figured, come on, water buffalo. They come from Asia. Those things should be able to stay out in the middle of the fields endlessly. So tell us what the kicker is with these guys. Well, they don't really... They do perspire, but not like a beef cow. So, you know, if I had them standing out here with no shade and no pond, they're going to be huffing and puffing and there's going to be some stress. Not a little stress, but a lot of stress. A lot of stress like death? Potentially. We unfortunately have lost a couple old cows in paddocks that we were coming through. It got hotter earlier than before we moved in. That was it. So if they can just come in, dip in the water, spend a couple minutes, come back out, and they'll just do that all day long. So I would say this right here is a perfect example of why I would never personally consider having water buffalo. Yes, if you have stock ponds. There's absolutely no way. Yeah. Boy, these things are destructive. Yes. Look at that. That is wild. That is absolutely wild. And if they don't have a pond, they will waller out of spot, and they will make a small mud hole, and it'll just work over time into actually a small pond. Wow. If they stay in a pond, like I had some bulls pull off the cows, and there's now some 12-foot-wide holes that are 18 inches deep. Because they're bored, and they just want to keep digging to stay in the mud. Well, one of my favorite things on my ranch is my ponds that are beautiful, and they have aquatic plants. Funny thing, that's why they brought buffalo here originally. They thought they were going to eat the invasive aquatic plants in Florida in the internal waterways, and they got them here, and they realized they don't really eat water plants. They eat grass. They just go in and out of the water. They eat the desirables. Yeah. So that was kind of the original mindset of why they brought them back about 50 years ago. Wow. They're very destructive. Very, very destructive. Very. Yeah. What are you keeping for mineral since we're here? It's a mix of two-thirds Redmond salt, one-third Redmond conditioner. Okay. You're keeping conditioner. Yeah. You're remediating. Okay. So what we're standing on used to be a solid thick of the... Yeah. Right there, actually. Look over here. I would assume that's remnant. That is. Planted in 1970. So that's what we are standing on. They flew on the seed, and they also put rose in some of it. So it was a solid stand of pine. What have you been doing to correct your pH? Just traditional ag lime applications? Or are you doing crushed? Crushed eggshells. Eggshells. Yep. That's right. So Jordan uses the egg membrane collagen protein in the supplements for ancient nutrition. Well, let's keep motoring. Let's go look at the other stands. Yeah. What you got? That's kind of the rule of thumb I've been trying to follow. Well, if you see some, point it out. Yeah. I don't see any up here. All right. So we're in since 70. So 50-something years of... Yep. 50-plus years stand... Of Pesky. K31. Good old in-the-pipe Pesky. K31. Highly toxic grass. Yep. That's it. Oh, cool. They're whispering to me. There you go. The fawn. See? That dang fawn didn't even want to hear me pontificate about grass. It's like, I'm out of here, man. I can tell you right now, I would eat everything but the K31. Yeah, it was fine until this guy started talking. It was like... You're preaching to the choir. I'm out of here. I don't want to hear it. That's right. Boom. Gone. Yeah. He's like, I know. I know. I don't eat the Kentucky 31 either. Gives me indigestion. Yeah, it smells like geraniums, kind of. Geraniums? No. Gardenia. Lavender. Not geraniums. Gardenia. It smells like lavender to me. That's what I thought. It kind of slightly has a lavender smell. Mm-mm. It smells like gardenia. It has more of a floral scent than the lavender. That's what I'm saying. Kelly, what was that that Colt had me eat and it's in Earl... It tastes like Earl Grey tea. Oh, what? Yeah, like, you know, it's bergamot that makes it. Earl Grey. Bergamot. Yeah, that's the spice that makes Earl Grey. That's what we were eating. It was bergamot. Yeah. Beautiful, freaking purple flower. They have... I didn't know what race it was around. It's native here. At any rate... It tastes like Earl Grey. Yes. Oh, nice. It is spicy. Oh, I like it. Oh, it's a kick in the face. Should have been beef. Should have been ground. Is that the bergamot, Kelly? This is it. There's our wild bergamot. Wild bergamot. There's... Yeah. I think that's the first I've seen here. That's really kind of cool that you just picked it out. That's kind of cool that we just talked about it. Find some. My mother wants you to send them to her. Yeah. So funny. Now, do you see them take and drink water from these if they have fresh water elsewhere? Not too much. They will. Now, I guarantee you when we had... You know, we've brought our beef cattle and our water buffalo together and tried to get higher concentration and much more of a grazing impact. Yeah. And the cattle, after the buffalo one pass, they will not touch it. They will not drink it. And they'll just go to the fresh tank. Okay. But the buffalo will. They... You know, until it gets really chocolate milky. Yeah. So tell me this. What is their sexual maturity? How fast do they mature? When and like daily gains? Anything like that? On average, two to two and a half before the buffalo can conceive. Okay. Two and a half. So you got to get 24 to 26 months before they'll conceive. They got 10 months gestation. So you're at a three-year-old before you get the first calf. Bulls, same thing. Start to be able to, you know, impregnate a cow two weeks at two and a half. And they say an established cow will not stand for a young calf. A young bull. They... Okay. They just, they have much more of an aversion to young bulls. So you've got to have some mature bulls in there with your young ones until they get up because otherwise you don't have your older cow settled. Okay. So yeah. That's a long time. It is. Three years for now. Yeah. You got three years before you get your first calf on the ground. Then you got... Calf. And then you got another two years before they can become two, two and a half years before they can. Yeah. Lots of slow process to build a herd. Yeah. You've got to... You got to get in there and get the wheel turning before you're going to start making money. I'd like that initial startup. Not like these. Yeah. Have a lamb and still a lamb. Yeah. And what's the market bearing on these things right now? Live weight? Live weight, buck 30 to buck 50 a pound. There's just such a select group. Mm-hmm. And I had one Buffalo cow. You would never conceive. She weighed 2,200 pounds. She just looked like this. Fat pig. She was short, little thing. I mean, oodles of fat. We make lots of tallow out of her. Yeah? How does the tallow taste? Clean. Yeah? Very clean. It's very white. So they don't get a yellow fat like a beef or grass? Not that I've seen. No. And it's just a real clean... It's highly desirable in the making like those creams from tallow, like tallow balm, tallow cream. So, Grayson, say that again because we might not have heard it. What did you observe? That... Zoom in on it. She's got a mucus plug hanging. Yep. Okay. Cool. Oh, and she's not with the herd, per se. Right. It would make sense. Hanging back. And everybody ran right past her. Is that a bull? Yep, there's a bull coming. I was just going to say. I'm guessing that's a bull, the way he's moving. Yeah, Tristan Nassau, there you see. Just a larger diameter, heavier head. Mm-hmm. A green head off a water buffalo bull when we spotted him at almost 200 pounds. Jeez. I mean, there's just a ton of weight to that. 150 to 200 pounds of general size. And weighing that high, there again, another 250 pounds. I mean, it's just, you've got a lot laying on the floor. So, will the males try to kill the calves? No, we haven't had any issues with that. They say in the wild that a bull will come in and kind of pair off 20, 30 cows for his own. Okay. And they'll kind of do their own little sub-herd thing. And then when the calves are all born and the breeding's done, the ladies just kind of kick them out. And then the bulls kind of wad up together in the off-season. And then they become their own kind of self-isolated herd. What's your website? We're going to put that up. The ranch does not have a website yet. That's in development. They had one, and it kind of fell apart. We're starting to get those wheels in motion. But we're going to get that going. But I have a website for the books I write. Oh, okay. We can do that. It's still a devotional book, though. Oh, that's fine. Hey, we can talk about pastures and sheep and buffalo and it all kind of falls into biblical teachings. It does. No. There it is. That is a lot of eggshells, my friend. Oh, well, look at your mountain over here, over there, over here. Now, some of these piles were hatchery waste. Now, that's not the whole thing. They use this as their line. Calcium addition, right? Yep. I would put this in a round pit. For some reason, I don't know if that place is not in operation. Up until two and a half years ago, they were just trucking it in twice a month, semi-load a month, every other month, I mean twice a month. But it hasn't been now for a while, so I think we're about to get real wet. Brained on. Real wet. I'm going to get in my cab machine. Oh, probably. You know what? Can I take one of them? Yeah, so. Yeah, have them burn all the horns off of them, that Brahma carryover. Okay. Now, are a lot of these pulled, though? I would say 85% of the calves we've dropped are probably, 85 to 90% are pulled. Okay. We're getting some horn throwback, but. They look good. They got good condition. Yeah. They do. You know. Like this girl right here, she looks real nice. Yes, that was one of the old calves I brought. And then the calves are. Got good fat deposits around the tail head. Is there anything you guys can do or do for fly control? You just let it, let nature take its course? Well, I haven't tried the garlic C-Cure. C-90? C-90 garlic. I thought about trying that this year. It helps. I think it does. It takes six, eight weeks for it to, you know. That's got to be 50, 60, 70 pounds of horn alone. Not even. Big hollow. Oh, they're hollow. They're hollow. They look like a beehive. Yeah. It's cavernous. It's all vascular. Yeah. God, I feel it. When they hit them, though, it sounds like you're hitting cardboard. Yeah, yeah. You know, wrapping paper tubes together. Crazy. I think those are. Yes. Break them. Yeah. Bacon green. Look at this. What's that? A little wet. Y'all a little wet. How'd you make out, babe? Did you do okay? You're a little wet. Oh, you're not bad. You're not bad. Oh, it is so loud. Look at this. It is just. Oh, I'm getting a head start. All right. So the rain is not subsiding. We looked at the weather app. It looks like it's just going to keep pouring on us. So we're going to take a rain check. We'll be back in just a second. I think I'm going to come out here and try to finish this tour and interview to show you the rest of the place. Say bye for two seconds. We'll be back. Ah, there he is. So here we are a couple days later. I said we'd be right back. Good boy. Team. Let's do it. Here we go. That's the way. One of my favorite things. Tip out windshield. Oh, yeah. So we took a quick detour before we're going to go see the buffalo, but Mike has something here for us. We're going to mount a little buffalo head for the head of Tick Creek Ranch, you know, UTV vehicle here. I think it'll be a nice addition. That's awesome. The true cowboy Cadillac. That's right. Just like Boss Lockup. Thanks, buddy. My pleasure. I think it's cool. Heck yeah, we'll hang that one up. Yeah, I'll get you a bigger one when we butcher a bigger one. Yeah. We're going to hang some of those on the house. I'm going to actually maybe hang that in my shop. That's cool. Yeah. That is super cool. Awesome. Thank you. Hey, all right. Can't wait. Let's go check out the buffalo. Bye. Let's do it. Well, yeah, they don't jump the high wires. Oh, we're ready, kids. That's beautiful. Yeah. Blackberries are gorgeous, man. Yeah, they are. They're nice. Himalayan Algerian invasive species are just around. That's sericea. That's like, man, there was money in that. Yeah. Yep. So what's this right here? This is the neighbors. You guys are clearing out. So they're just clearing. We did our fence last year, and then we put a buffer in because we're organic. They're not. Oh, OK. All right, we're going to give you guys a little look with the drone here. You might need to go a little higher. Sometimes they've been bugged by drones. But they've seen drones, so they're not totally asinine. First time we threw a drone out here, that was like parting the waters of the Red Sea. Woo! Come on! Go! Well, I can push him with the drone. You know that. Very fresh. A couple hours old. If that still wet umbilical. I gotta go take you to find your bad mom that abandoned you. I sound just like her. Mm-hmm. What do you think about that, Tren? I want it. We can put it in the truck and take it home. Yeah, we don't have buffalo milk. And I'm pretty sure our cows will not accept this water buffalo. Thank you. 970, what are you talking about? Yeah, right. I could just milk her in the pasture and put her in the bottle and boom. You have a goose. You have a puppy. I have a baby horse. Nine horses on the property now. Look at this. I know. It's a cute little thing. I need one. I'll get one eventually. Picked it up. I got the video. You helped out. I definitely need two, right? Here, Tren. Oh, she's so cute. Troublemaker. Mm-hmm. But look at how cute she is. That face makes up for all of it. I know, the whole herd. It's a friendly one. It's one that enjoys pets for sure. They look sketchy. Come back and race again. She says, okay, I'm done. What's the mortality rate of these calves compared to beef? Well, if we can keep them with mommy, that's our biggest hurdle is probably loss of just being lost. Yeah, yeah. And that's not high. But we don't find a lot of dead calves. I mean, we find a couple. I mean, just from, like, slipped calf or some unknown cause. Our gestation rate of the younger animals is good. I don't have a hard number because we don't have them branded so I can say every cow had a calf. Sure. They wear tags off. And they all look black and the same, so it's like, how do you tell, right? Yeah. And there's not that many distinctions in characters. But with younger animals, I think we've got very good gestation rates. What would you guess? The younger animals, probably 80% for the young ones. Now, the older ones, I think they start skipping years. You know, you get over 18, 20 years. I mean, they can calve into their mid to late 20s. But I don't believe, from my experience, that they show me that they calve every year. Yeah, well, you can tell which ones are heat-adapted and not, right? I'm trying. You drive by a farm, you look out, and they're all shaded up. Or standing in a pond up to the waist. Or they're water buffalo, like water buffalo. Yeah, like water buffalo. And a neighbor's got some cattle out grazing. Because that's what you see with the buffalo. They'll be in the water and out of the water. They just need that for a little cooling. They don't just stay there all day like a non-heat-adapted beef cattle. We'll stand there for hours. Because they're like, I can't handle it. Buffalo just takes a dip, comes out, grazes, comes back in. And they'll move as a group. Dip it in, dip it out. And so, I mean, they're very effective that way. And they keep grazing. And the heat doesn't really bother them as long as they can just get that cooling. And it seems like some of the cattle, they never get out of it. Because they honestly can't even cool down. Because it's a shallow four-foot pond. And the water's probably 85 degrees. And so, they're just like, I don't know which is worse. Well, I talked to one guy years ago. And he said what they're trying to do is get those hooves in the cool mud. Because the first place you lose vascular flow is to the extremities, the feet and the hooves. So, they're trying to cool that to open the blood flow so they can get some blood flow to their feet. Yeah, a massive amount of blood goes to the hooves. That's why you can pump a calf right after birth. I mean, that's one of the best perspectives. That's where the buffalo, they have a larger foot. Huge. I was just noticing this calf right here, she's 30% hooves. I mean, they've got a giant hoof. Huge. That's a big old foot for a little bitty calf. That's big. I know. And he's like four days old. If you've got some bad hay, they can work with you. I mean, they can maintain themselves and not fall apart on some four-foot. I think it's because lower, slower gut, more bacterial action. And they can churn that stuff that a normal animal, beef animal won't. Well, they're wild animals. Yeah. Right, I mean. Yeah, they know how to survive. Yeah. Most of the cattle herd in, well, most of the world has been pampered for a very long time. Oh, sure. I think the closest thing we have to wild cattle are Corriente. Probably. It's probably the least far removed from wild genetics, yeah. Yeah, right. And that's why you can't kill them. They're tough. Can you eat them? No, I'm just kidding. Actually, I've actually been, I'm part of a grazing group. Have you eaten some Corriente? I have. Now, this one was, it wasn't finished, let's say that. But it's a Corriente group on Facebook, and somebody was showing their animal that they finished on like a 120, 140-day ration. Of a grain, of like a feedlot ration. Yeah, they were given all kinds of inputs, and they finished it. And it looked like Wagyu. Unbelievable amounts of marbling. Hence, you know, it makes sense. They live on tumbleweeds. Well, but I mean, you take any of us, and you sit us down in a couch, and give us nothing but starches and carbohydrates, and you get fat Americans, you get fat American cattle. But at the same time, though, a lot of them cattle, they just get a fat cap. Right. And no marbling. That's true. And this thing was marbled out. I was like, oh, okay. Well, that is something to be thought about anyway. Because I don't think you'll get a buffalo. I mean, no matter how well we've taken some really great high-energy grass, a little bit of marbling, but they're like a bison. They just don't marble their musk as much. That's just not what they do. They probably just get visceral fat and fat fat. Correct. Yeah. We never even introduced the guy standing in the background. Yeah, we better get the help on here. Come on. Yeah, this is two of our excellent staff. This is Sean LeMaster and Randy Parrott. All right. Well, we've met, but good to see you again. Good to see you. And Wes. Without these guys, it wouldn't happen. So we have a small crew, but we do a lot of work. And we try to work as efficiently as we can. Again, how many acres are you having to maintain with three men? 4,000 acres. Excuse me, three men and one lady. Three men and one lady. And then we have a guy that trucks and does some part-time equipment work for us. Okay. But, yeah, 4,000 acres, 2,100 acres open. And we do it all with just that small crew. Plus a lot of other things that don't involve the ranch. Yeah, right. Like harvesting blackberries and other things. So, yeah. When I first started here, we occasionally find some calves left back. They become orphaned. It was too many days. And we had a very poor survivability rate. One day I watched a cow come out of this mud hole. And the calf just latched on. I'm like, soil-borne organisms. I mean, we're not getting that. So, one of the products that Jordan sells from Ancient Nutrition and Garden of Life are soil-borne organisms because they can keep the human gut. Yeah. So, we started putting a capsule of that in every bottle of buffalo milk. And our survivability rate has been up, like, 90%. Really? Yeah. Now, is that just for buffalo or bovine? We've added it to a few beef calves, too. And it definitely helps. Okay. Do you guys have a site that you want to? Well, that's Ancient Nutrition sells SBO. I think SBO Protect. That's, you know, Jordan's old company. And then Garden of Life. I don't know what their product is. He started both of those companies. Okay. Yeah, soil-borne organisms about, you know, the spores of the soil-borne beneficial bacteria. Keto our gut. Keto an animal's gut. So, yeah. Awesome. Well, we'll get the information. We'll put it up on the screen so people can visit the website. That'd be good. Check it out. Yeah, and you'll plug my devotional book I'm starting to write now. Yeah, yeah. We'll throw that up there, too. That's it. That's right. We'll get that going. Thank you for having us out here. Thank you. It was a pleasure. Appreciate it. And, yeah. Yeah. We'll come out again. Yeah, we'll have to come again as we keep making improvements. Sure. Yeah. Just gonna do a little video log thing. And I'll hook up your... Yeah, you can ride it over here. You can ride it over here. That would be really cool.