Bringing home the bison: The lords looking after the UK's largest land mammal

'Oscar! Oscar!’ The ‘bison queen’, Ruth Wakeling, is calling her newest charge. All legs, Oscar emerges from his trailer. He is an orphan; Ruth is his surrogate mother, tasked with bottle-feeding him four times a day. He sucks at the bottle of Lamlac, his little eyes popping out of his head. ‘After two days, I couldn’t go in [the pen] on my own,’ Ruth says. ‘He’s very strong.’

Ruth and her husband, George, have kept American bison at Bouverie Lodge Farm, near Melton Mowbray in Leicestershire, since 2000. Today, they care for about 50 of the beasts. For years, they had red deer alongside them and now sell their meat: fresh, frozen and as hot and cold food at Through the Gate, their on-farm café — almost the last survivors of an industry that has long been beleaguered by bureaucracy.

Following the death of Edward Smith-Stanley, 13th Earl of Derby, in 1851, a sale catalogue of the ‘menagerie and aviary’ from Knowsley Hall in Lancashire was produced. In it — alongside six cashmere goats, two golden eagles and a beaver — was an American bison. A century later, Colin Ellis (from 1999, the 6th Baron Seaford) was at prep school, watching the bison in Walt Disney’s The Vanishing Prairie. ‘I felt that I must have some one day,’ he remembers. ‘When I went to agricultural college, I bet the people I shared a house with that, by the time I was 40, I would have a breeding herd. I won the bet.’

It was in 1986 that the first American bison came to Lord Seaford’s Wiltshire farm. Within a few years, having rounded up calves from UK safari parks, he looked abroad for fresh blood and began acquiring them from Dr Ken Throlson’s North Dakota ranch in the USA, via the Belgian bison enthusiast Jean-François d’Hoffschmidt. ‘When they came over to Belgium, I would pop over there with a trailer and get the calves,’ he explains. ‘We did that a couple of times and it grew from there.’

One of the bison fans Lord Seaford collected along the way was former Leicester Tigers lock Arthur Hazlerigg — from 2002, the 3rd Baron Hazlerigg, who lived at Noseley Hall in Leicestershire. As his son William, 4th Baron Hazlerigg, remembers: ‘One of Dad’s friends ran Chester Zoo and, one year, they had a glut of bison calves and asked Dad if he would like some. He said: “Why not?” We ended up with a herd of about 36.’ The late Lord Hazlerigg ‘used to treat them like pets — he had a big walking stick and if they got a bit rambunctious, he would bop them on the nose and quickly walk away’. One day, the Fernie hunt, coming through the estate, found itself in the bison field — much to the bemusement of both hounds and bison. It wasn’t unlike the late baron suddenly to decide to keep bison — an arrangement that ended when foot and mouth arrived in 2001. ‘He was a bon viveur,’ notes Lord Hazlerigg, ‘and always up for a laugh.’

Lord Seaford, now retired, established the British Bison Association in 1993 and, by the early 2000s, it had about 20 members. Today, there is scarcely a handful, red tape having pushed many farmers out — particularly as regards bovine TB testing. Bison do not like to be handled, and can die from the stress of human contact. ‘It’s crackers,’ laments Ruth. ‘We have one killed a month and if there was TB it would show up at the abattoir — they don’t go off the farm unless they’re dead.’

If it seems extraordinary that, of the tiny number of British bison farmers, two of them should be hereditary peers — themselves an endangered species — it is more extraordinary still that there is a third. Robert Wynn, 8th Baron Newborough, has run the Rhug estate in North Wales since 1998 and struck upon the idea of introducing bison to his farm in 2007 in Sussex. ‘I walked around the corner and there was a herd of bison. I thought: “Wow, I want some of these,”’ he recalls. The first seven bison at Rhug came from Ireland. ‘Everyone was gobsmacked — we put them in a field by the main road and the traffic started slowing down to see them and then turned into our farm shop.’ Inspired, Lord Newborough bought a few more and soon Rhug ‘became known as the place with the bison’.

Now, the 12,500-acre estate has — in addition to its Drive Thru café, farm shop, sheep, chicken and venison businesses — 35 bison and runs a dedicated bison walk. ‘We love showing them to people,’ Lord Newborough enthuses. ‘When we have bison on the butcher’s counter in the farm shop, it’s a sell out. They are very important to us — I wouldn’t want to be without them.’

At Rhug, bison are a central part of the visitor experience. Near Canterbury, at the Wilder Blean project — a partnership between Kent Wildlife Trust and the Wildwood Trust — the public can observe European bison in a rather different environment. A herd of nine now roams West Blean and Thornden Woods as part of a wilding initiative that hopes to restore natural woodland processes — the Rare Breeds Survival Trust would point out that native British cattle breeds, such as the longhorn, can achieve similar results.

Their impact, says bison ranger Heidi Aguirregoicoa, is evident. ‘They roll around and create big dust baths — they’ve done it in the ex-plantation conifer areas that aren’t the most biodiverse. They get rid of all the bracken and the bramble and make these nice open areas. It’s lovely to see.’ Heidi respects her subjects, which she describes as ‘very emotional and smart’, and can be found sitting for long periods watching them, waiting for ‘a specific dung sample — it’s very relaxed’.

All of those involved with bison, past and present, whom I speak to, adore their beasts. They are, according to Lord Seaford, ‘lovely creatures, very polite’. The Wakelings have had fun with their bison — as well as ‘a lot of tears,’ adds Ruth, ‘but we will always have bison’. At Hill Farm Packington, near Ashby-de-la-Zouch in Leicestershire, Janice and Andrew Sumnall have kept bison since 2006 when, intending to buy some red deer, they visited Lord Seaford. Seeing his bison, ‘lo and behold, I took a fancy,’ confesses Andrew. At their peak, they had about 40, but now, winding down — ‘it’s a young man’s job, bison’ — they have five, which they love as much as ever. ‘When Andrew is on the ride-on mower, they walk up and down on the other side of the fence and watch him,’ says Janice.

Still, bison are not for the faint-hearted. As well as stress from handling, bison are affected by malignant catarrhal fever, which is carried by sheep. Accordingly, they cannot be grazed near sheep — a challenge for Lord Newborough, as ‘there are more sheep in Wales than people’. They can also be dangerous and are much more athletic than they look, being capable of travelling at 35 miles an hour. Lord Seaford once sold some bison to a ‘fellow in Scotland’ to keep in his deer park, advising him to put mesh on the gate. A month later he received a call to say that the bison had got out: ‘He hadn’t put mesh on the gate and they’d put their horns through and lifted the gate off its hinges — they’re not idiots.’

When the Sumnalls lost their stock bull three years ago, they buried his ashes close to the fence adjoining the bison field. ‘That night, the bison were standing in a group and, one by one, they came up to the fence where he was buried, stood for a few seconds and then walked into the field shelter,’ remembers Janice. ‘It was as if they were paying their respects.