Yaks!

April 29, 2022

After nearly a decade of loving yaks from afar, they are on their way, closer and closer every minute. They will be delivered and step off their trailer onto their new forever-home. I was working on grading and then Ganesh came out of the office and said, “Your yaks are here.” I looked out the window and sure enough the pickup truck with a horse trailer attached was stopped at the front gate. I looked at my phone and I was getting a call from Ruth, the lady that works at the Smiling Buddha Yaks.

Yaks arrive!

Dusty and Rocky

The trailer with their wonderful logo on the side pulled up the long driveway. It was so exciting. My baby yakies on that trailer! I waved my arm for her to drive the truck around the back of the house. I opened the fence, and she drove up to the coral that we built. She opened their door and they didn’t come out right away, they were nervous, which is to be expected. I feel a little sad for them, they are separated from all their buddies, their parents, in a new place they don’t know. But hopefully we can befriend them and they can learn to love this new place.

 
Ruth gave me a few quick pointers. Don't wave your arms around or move super fast, that freaks them out. Sit on a bucket with your back to them, when the come around to the font of you, give them a treat. “You just gotta spend the time with them,” she said, “He likes the cookies and she likes the sweet feed, she does these little bluff charges too.” I was like, okay, how bad can that be? “Keep an eye on those halters, they will outgrow these and you’ll have to loosen them.” She assured me that I will have lots of questions as we work with them and to just give her a call whenever we want to. I felt reassured because she said, wow this is a nice property, better than ours. The one with the white spot on his forehead is the boy and his name was registered as Colorado, and the girl has no white spot but a gray nose and named Chama. We are trying to think of new names for them. I wanted to name the boy Bastian, like a fort or stronghold. but then it leaves the girl…what to name her? I kind of liked Courage, so you could call her Curry for short. Then I was thinking about Pilgrim so I could say, “Howdy, Pilgrim.” But Ganesh didn’t like Bastian and Pilgrim was quite difficult for Aji to pronounce. I wanted to just take our time and get to know their personalities and that the names would come to us. But the longer we wait the longer Colorado and Chama will be engrained and harder to change in our brains. Those are the names on their ear tags, which I wish we could take off, but without them there’s no way to prove that they are our yaks. We have their birth certificates and yak registrations under those names. Anyways. We decided on Rocky for the boy and Dusty for the girl. Rocky as in Balboa, the fictional character who is the quintessential American underdog, and Dusty for Hannah Duston, the first woman in American history to have a statue built in her honor. But part of me still doesn’t like how similar Rocky and Dusty sound. I still have a place in my heart for Bastian haha.

 

Week 1 of Yak Husbandry

I went out and sat with them, I didn’t have treats so I cut the fresh spring grass and collected it in a bucket and brought that. They stayed away from me, but I stayed there and about 40 minutes later they came up and grabbed a handful of grass from me. Dusty came up and sniffed my back, her breath was hot and loud. Over the next few days, of course about 8 million questions started to come up. Dusty indeed bluff charges. When a several hundred pound animal more than half your size with horns takes several running steps in your direction with their horns pointed at you—that’s better than coffee right there. She has always stops and never actually hits me, but man it’s just about enough to give you a heart attack. And of course, I have a hundred questions, “how am I supposed to react to that?” How does one respond in order to train them well from the beginning? I felt so confident but it just eroded away in about two of those bluff charges. Still, I sat on the bucket with my back to them, which takes a lot of trust. Dusty came up and was swinging her head in a gentle sway but her horn would brush my leg. She got progressively harder each time, once again, how am I supposed to react to this? I just slowly stood up and left the coral. That’s it folks, my days being a yak rancher are done.

The next morning the spot where Dusty’s horn brushed my leg was a big bruise. This was eye opening for me, she was not even trying to hurt me. If she actually wanted to hurt me, I wouldn’t stand a chance. I felt pretty discouraged. I realized I really have no idea what I am doing and perhaps in over my head. But what can I do now? The yaks are in the backyard, I must overcome. We can’t have wild animals in the back 20, they have to be domesticated. There is no other option but to continue and face my fears. In the words of Jordan Peterson, I had not begun to fathom the depths of my ignorance. I thought you just put the animals in the field and they are just born friendly. That’s how they look on YouTube. All those documentaries of Tibet and Nepal where the people are trekking along and the yaks are just walking calmly in a line along side the trekkers. All the YouTube ranchers who post videos of their cute friendly yaks. I even found images from the national stock conference and show where all these ranchers were bringing their yaks all dressed up and clean and presenting them. Mine have to become like that eventually…right?

I called The Yak Hotline (aka Ruth) and she said the best reaction is no reaction to the bluff charges, which is incredibly hard to do, let me tell you. You have to be one with your inner Clint Eastwood and think “Well punk, do you feel lucky?” If she’s acting “really mean about it” you can stomp your foot or say no, and the last resort is a bonk on the nose. Really. This big thing that buffalos along and could crush you with a single snort, you bonk it on the nose. I haven’t needed to use this secret weapon yet. But I have stomped. They are big chickens and run away if you stomp your foot, but somehow this isn’t enough of a comfort.