Mob grazing, naturally....

It was last Sunday and I'd 'awarded' myself a day off to go and look at Mount Rushmore and its carvings. On the map, it didn't look too far (it turned out to be a 430 mile, 8 hour round trip, but that's another story!)

Two hours into the trip, I got very excited because on the distant prairie I spotted some dark shapes, tightly bunched together within the vast plains.

It could only mean one thing: Someone was mob-grazing cattle.

As I got closer, things began to look a little odd. I couldn't see fences containing the animals. Also, the dark shapes I'd assumed to be black angus cattle were taking on a strange shape as I got closer. Then it dawned on me. These weren't cattle at all. And they weren't penned in by electric fence. These were bison, naturally forming into a mob as protection from predators and slowly wandering across the prairie.

For someone whose interest in mob grazing is almost becoming an obsession, it was a marvellous moment!

Bison running alongside the highway fenceline in a naturally formed mob

Thank goodness for zoom lenses!