Klein Publishes Book About Buffalo Farm
Carol Klein of Jane recently released her autobiography, “Buffalo Children: How I Became a Buffalo Mother,” on Amazon.com.
It is the story of her 22 years of running Oakcreek Buffalo Ranch. She and her husband, Leon, bought the farm and ran it together for many years. He died seven years ago.
Klein said, “We came down to visit friends and bought the farm the same day we found it. We never looked back.”
She started writing her book the same year they got the buffalo, she said. After the first eight chapters, however, she put it away and forgot about it. She recently found the manuscript and finished it.
“I try to tell it like I remember it, like when I was there. But I enjoyed writing it,” she said. “Amazon was incredibly wonderful to work with and they published it for me. I’m working with them to get it converted to Kindle. I put lots of pictures in it. I had to do them in black and white or it would have been cost-prohibitive. The e-book will only be $2.99.”
She said she was trying to reach a wide audience. She refers to her “buffalo children” because she does not have “people children,” she said.
She explained what working with buffalo is like. “Working with buffalo can be kind of traumatic for me and them,” she said. “They’re stronger than cows and faster than horses. When you work them through the squeeze shoot, they freak out and will do anything up to killing themselves to get away. Once they’re free again, they’re as calm as can be. They just don’t want to be confined. Ninety-nine percent of the time they’re calm, sweet animals that graze and play and sleep, but that 1 percent of the time is a stark terror. So I do that as seldom as possible.”
Klein has been solely responsible for the herd’s welfare for the past seven years. She is now 73 years old, she added.
“My job is to keep me in good health so I can keep up with them for as long as I live,” she said.
Klein added that buffalo have to have economic value in order for farms to exist. Their value is in their meat, she said.
“I do sell meat here at the farm, but mostly I sell breeding stock to
My job is to keep me in good health so I can keep up with them for as long as I live.
Carol Klein Jane resident and owner of Oakcreek Buffalo Ranch
start new herds, or for somebody else to feed out for meat,” she said. She noted she sold six bull calves at auction this spring and they brought $2,000 apiece at 350 pounds. Buffalo are smaller than cattle when they are born and they grow slower, but they live longer, she added.
“When I was writing the book, I was trying to reach a number of different people,” she said. “Because of the name, people often think it’s a children’s book, but it’s not. I wanted people to see what it’s like for buffalo on a farm. I wanted to share the nutrition information because buffalo meat not only tastes better, it’s more nutritious. I have a degree in health education and I’m very proud that I’m raising healthy meat on grass as naturally as possible.”
She said she has received positive feedback and was glad she did not lose readers when talking about the nutrition information.
“I was trying to entertain and inform people, but I have a special target audience: people who are interested in raising buffalo. I want those people to read the book and learn from my mistakes and my successes. Mistakes can be heartbreaking and costly, and people can give up if they don’t have help in learning and understanding the bison.”
This summer, Klein went to Big Sky, Mont., for the International Buffalo Conference. On the last day, she went to Turner’s Ranch near Yellowstone National Park. It was 114,000 acres with more than 7,000 buffalo roaming around, she said. Someone asked her, “Do you think that’s what it used to look like?” She answered, “That’s what we hope the future looks like.”
Klein noted there were less than 1,000 buffalo 100 years ago. Private individuals and some public herds have increased the population in the U.S. to 300,000. The National Bison Association wants to raise the population worldwide to 1 million over the next 10 years, Klein said.
She said the consumer can help by eating buffalo meat because it helps support ranches that are supporting the population.
As a final thought on her book, she said, “I wasn’t actually planning to write a book, it just kind of happened.”