Buffalo babies bring joy to Round Rock rancher
Two fuzzy, orange calves are part of small herd on 10 acres.
Just a few miles ROUND ROCK — east of the cars whizzing by on Interstate 35, Joe Kotrla spent a quiet morning in Round Rock watching his two new buffalo calves. The two fuzzy, orange babies, born about two weeks ago, nursed from their hulking buffalo mothers in a pasture filled with blue and yellow wildflowers.
Even though his small herd has produced babies before, Kotrla, 79, can’t talk about what seeing new calves again means to him without his eyes misting over with tears.
“That’s what it’s all about,” he said, waving at the calves. “It makes everything worthwhile.”
The calves weighed about 28 pounds each when they were born and could reach 1,000 to 2,000 pounds when full grown, depending on whether they are male or female American buffalo, officially called bison.
Kotrla, who is part Czech and part Lakota Indian, has kept buffalo on his 10 acres of land for more than 20 years. He has sold some of them to be kept as pets, he said, but never for their meat.
“I think buffalo are sacred, and the world was in better shape when we had them,” he said. “The start of a downfall was when we started killing them.”
He calls his 10-acre place “Brushy Bottom Bison Basin.” It’s in the floodplain of Brushy Creek, which is the main reason Kotrla says he’s not afraid it will get developed.
He said his grandfather bought the land in the 1920s.
Kotrla has one adult male, three females and the two calves in his buffalo herd. One of the females is pregnant so soon there will be a third new baby calf, Kotrla said. He said he goes out in his golf cart and just sits in the pasture while they graze around him, he said.
“They bring me a sense of peace,” Kotrla said. “It’s like sitting next to a waterfall.”
He hand-feeds them some high protein snacks daily, plus they feed on hay bales and graze the grass.
None of his buffalo are tame, but Kotrla still has a picture inside of his house of “He Tanka” — the buffalo calf that became his pet after its mother died. Kotrla said “He Tanka” was so attached to him, the animal tried to follow Kotrla up the steps of his house once.
He Tanka is the father of the two new calves Kotrla has this spring, but the bull died about a year ago, Kotrla said.
Kotrla, a Navy veteran who spent six tours of duty in Vietnam, grew up in Granger and Taylor. His
father, Alvin “Bull” Kotrla, was Texas High School Football Coach of the Year in 1954. Joe Kotrla said when he discovered later in his life he was part Lakota, he traveled from Texas to South Dakota to participate in Indian dances.
He also developed an appreciation for buffalo. “They are part of my heritage,” he said.
Kotrla’s wife, who was his high school sweetheart, died two years ago, he said. Now he spends his days listening to Willie Nelson music while surrounded by his buffalo, plus his five dogs, seven pigs, two donkeys, a horse, four doves, 20 pigeons and a macaw named “Jesse.”
“I’m more comfortable around animals than people,” he said.