On Sat, 4 May 2002 08:52:52 -0400, Tom Barber <[log in to unmask]> wrote:

>According to the National Tallgrass Prairie web site, there were once "50
to
>60 million" bison roaming the prairie.

That's more like the 66 million Ray claims.
I still wonder how long the animals in this population lived.
I assume several years, so it would be less than 66 million cattle, living
only 1+1/2 year.

If the grasslands are highly productive, ok, I think it's possible.
As long as the animal dung  and the animal carcass is left onto the same
place.
As soon as some food is transported away, may it be plant crops or animal
carcass, the soil is taken away the amount of nitrogen and minerals.
(not carbs, this comes from the air).
So slowly the production goes down.

In Germany, and I think in many other countries, particularly the
Netherlands there is great oversupply of nitrogen in the from of animal
excrements. Unfortunately not very applicaple to fertilize landscape.
In the followup the nitrogen sinks into the ground water where it
intoxicates the water resources with nitrat/nitrit.
It's a sign how much additional power fedder (soy from argentinia) and
artificial fertilizer is beeing used on the landscape.
Thanks God in bavaria there still are good water resources without such
residues.



>
>Today there are over "250,000 in the US."

I think you mean 250 million isn't it?

Roughly 1 animal per head in the country.
That's the count in Germany.
And that's about what is eaten. 250g per day and head.

But the difference is, that they don't eat only half of all grain thats
beeing grown. In addition they iae "power" protein food.
Say from argentinia and the US (there's a big debate about the
gen-manupulated part which cannot be excluded when importing from the US).

And other cows and animal carcasses, nicely heated to protein powder.
The supposed cause of the BSE spread.
At the time it's forbidden to feed this to cattle. For how many months?

regards

Amadeus S.