—Lanoutir Farming, Saturday. Nov. 9,1974
36
Beefalo Calves
I Continual Fr*« Pap 1|
trying to crocs buffalo and
beef animals when he owned
a buffalo ranch in Wyoming,
and says he went through
1000 breeding failures before
achieving what he calls the
perfect marriage.
Basolo says he was getting
nothing but sterile, sickly
■nfanals until 1970, when he
successfully crossed a
Holstein cow with a buffalo
bull. That mating did the
trick, and Basolo is now
selling cows, bulls and
beefalo sperm to other
ranchers. He expects beefalo
meat to start appearing in
California markets this year.
The Canadian government
feels so strongly about the
future of the breed, that they
recently plunked down $2.5
million for an outstanding
sire. That is a lot of nickels.
Kobut got his start in
Beefalo with the purchase of
12 ampules of semen. “At
first, we had a very, very
bad conception rate,” Kobut
told us at Graterford. “But
then suddenly it got better. I
tend to believe that our
original problem was caused
by some damage to the
semen while it was being
shipped here. The container
seemed to have lost a lot of
nitrogen by the time we got
it.”
Now, Kohut is well-pleased
with the conception rate, and
he’s very happy with the
healthy looking Beefalo
calves he’ll be rearing with
the help of Graterford in
mates. The calves are out of
a Holstein dam, an Angus-
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Nissley Farm Service L H. Brubaker
Washington Boro, Pa. Lancaster, Pa
Roy H. Buch, Inc.
' Ephrata, R.D 2
BHM Form Equipment, Inc.
Annville, R.D. 1, Pa
Holstein cross, and a
Charolais-Angus cross.
Kohut plana to breed his half
beefalo heifers back to
Beefalo sires, and hopes to
develop a purebred herd by
1960.
Kohut’s objectives to find
out if prison farms can
provide all the beef
requirements for the slate's
six correctional institutes. A
secondary objective is to
provide rewarding work
experience to inmates, many
of whom never saw a farm
animal before they went to
prison. There are about 80
inmates working at various
jobs on the 1760-acre
Graterford farm. It's an
experience which many of
them find quite rewarding,
according to Kohut. And the
beefalo calves really stirred
up some excitement.
“When that first calf was
born,” Kohut said, “I saw a
man serving a life sentence
watching that calf like a
mother hen.”
In addition to Kohut, the
farm staff includes two
assistant managers, a'dairy
herdsman and three
assistants, a swine herd
sman, shop foreman and a
detail officer. Using inmate
labor, the staff produces
much of the food used at
Graterford and some other
institutions. They farm 300
acres of corn, 200 acres of
barley, 28 acres of oats and
350 acres of hay. In addition
to a beef operation, there’s a
dairy herd with 141 bead
milking, they’re building a
farrowing house for a feeder
GrumeHi Form Service
Quarryville, Pa.
swine operation, and they
grow all tbo fruits and
vegetables mad in tbo
prison.
Rockviaw Penitentary,
near SUU Collage, hu the
biggaat farm In the Mate
prison system, but
Graterford rans a close
second.
“The nice thing about
getting inmates involved in
farm work, is that there are
so many skills to be lear
ned,” Kobut said. “We’re
putting up a new free stall
dairy barn, and most of the
finishing work - including
carpentry, plumbing and
electrical - is going to be
handled by inmates. Our
people learn to drive trucks,
they learn to handle heavy
equipment, bricklaying,
plumbing. They learn how to
work hard. I know that most
of them won’t go into far
ming when they get out of
here. I know must of them
will go right back to the
streets of Philadelphia.
“But when they do go
bade, I like to think that the
exposure they’ve gotten to
farming, and the skills they
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Nick Kohut left, farm program
director at the Graterford Correc
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County, explained the potential of
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Beefaio animals to a Philadelphia TV
reporter shortly after three Beefaio
calves were born on the farm.
“We try to produce food
here, true, and that’s the
main job of the farm. But I
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