BREEN – If one were to drive past Wilderness Farms in Hesperus and glance at the livestock, odds are they would do a double take. Instead of cows, 27 yaks graze on the tawny grasses and linger in the shade of piñon pine and juniper trees.
Their long, shaggy hair sweeps the ground and make the yaks look as if they float across the landscape as they walk. But that peaceful demeanor can change quickly: Unlike their cow cousins, yaks are half domestic and half wild. Get one mad, and they lift their tails, lower their U-shaped horns and charge whatever drew their ire (like the photographer who worked on this story).
A growing number of yak ranching operations in recent years – including cosmetics influencer Jeffree Star, who runs Star Yak Ranch in Wyoming – show how the animals are becoming more popular to livestock growers in the United States and Canada.
Ryan and Elise Heck, co-owners of Wilderness Farms, said they became curious about yaks in 2023. Since then, they have become a full-fledged yak ranching operation, selling meat online and at the Bayfield farmers market.
Elise said their half-domestic, half-wild DNA gives yaks a few advantages classic cattle lack.
“We’ve seen them push foxes out of the pasture,” she said. “Because they’re wild, they’ll all team up, they’ll put the babies in the center and they’ll push predators out of the pasture. We have to be careful with them around dogs, because they understand predators and they protect their calves very well.”
Ryan said yaks prefer cold temperatures and often calve in winter, often right onto the snow. Within the first couple minutes of birth, baby yaks are walking, shrugging off the chill as they nurse from their mother’s udders.
According to the Livestock Conservancy, yaks were imported to North America from Asia in the late 1800s and 1900s to be exhibited in zoos. Over the past century, their popularity with ranchers in North America has grown. American yaks are even considered their own unique subspecies because of their isolation from source populations in Asia.
Karma Bhotia, owner of Durango’s Himalayan Kitchen, serves two yak dishes – yak thentuk and yak korma. He said their meat is sweeter and has less fat than beef.
“Because of the domestic and wild mix, when you put beef and yak meat together, you will immediately notice,” he said. “Yak is more dark, more burgundy in color and sweeter with less fat.”
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Bhotia grew up in Nepal but is descended from Tibetans. He said that on the Tibetan Steppe, which is an arid region where crops are hard to grow, yaks were a staple to life. Tibetans use them for transporting goods through deep snow and high mountain passes, use their milk for cheese or butter, and eat their meat. They even use their dung, which they dry and burn for heat.
“Yaks are very meaningful for people who live in Himalayan region in many ways,” Bhotia said. “I’m a Nepalese but a Tibetan decent of Nepali. My background is with the Tibetan or Sherpa or Bhotia communities. We are connected with the yak meat.”
He said many Hindu Nepalis don’t eat yak meat because they believe cattle are sacred. But Tibetans, a largely Buddhist group, rely on their meat because other foods are hard to come by.
Bhotia was not always a restaurateur. He worked as a Sherpa guiding climbers up some of the world’s tallest peaks in the Himalaya before immigrating to the United States in 2001. He said a friend encouraged him to start a Nepali and Tibetan restaurant there since he had experience working as camp chef on several mountain expeditions.
His first restaurant was in California. As he was thinking about how to make a unique offering to his new American audience, Bhotia was surprised to learn that American ranchers were raising yaks, and he started buying yak meat from one in Montrose.
In 2008, Bhotia traveled to Durango to scope out a new restaurant and meet the yak farmer. He fell in love with the town, and later found out there were several yak farmers in the immediate area from which he could buy yak meat.
“When we got here, we arrived one in the morning,” he said. “We slept in the hotel, and (in the) morning I saw a mountain, I saw a river, I saw a small town, and said, ‘Wow, yes, this the place I was looking for and we should buy this business.’”
Bhotia said he felt a responsibility to buy ingredients for his restaurant from local, small producers in the community. As the number of yak ranchers grew over the years, he said he was able to consistently have locally raised yak on the menu, lending to a more culturally authentic dining experience.
To the Hecks, raising livestock at Wilderness Farms in an eco-conscious way is central to their operation. Yaks, they have found, offer a way to do just that.
Ryan said he does rotational grazing with his yaks, goats and chickens, which increases the biodiversity of his pastures and improves soil health. Additionally, yaks are smaller than cattle. That means they do not compact the soil as much, which, according to a Colorado State University study, increases ground water runoff and decreases soil health.
“(Yaks are) just not as heavy, and they don’t quite compact the ground as much just because they weigh less,” he said.
He said a full-grown female yak weighs around 600 pounds, while a male can weigh up to 1,500 pounds. Beef cattle, on the other hand, weigh in at 1,300 pounds for the cows and 2,000 pounds for the bulls.
An Oxford American study titled “Insights into the merits and market potential of yak meat,” found that yaks produce less methane than cattle – a greenhouse gas more potent than carbon dioxide. The study concluded that yak meat is a more environmentally friendly meat alternative than beef.
Elise found yak to be the only meat she could eat without getting indigestion when she was pregnant.
Yak meat is not that much more expensive than grass-raised beef. Ryan said his ground yak costs $11 per pound, while the beef alternative is $9 per pound, according to a quick Google search.
Additionally, the North American Yak Association says that yak meat is “silky” in texture, “high in protein and very low in fat,” low in cholesterol and has lots of Omega 3 fatty acids.
Elise said their yak farm is still growing, but that learning how to live with the quirky animals has been fun. With two young children, she said, they hope to raise a family of Southwest Colorado yak ranchers.
“We’re still learning, but we just love them,” she said. “We’re hoping to get to a point the boys love it.”
sedmondson@durangoherald.com
