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New York Times: May, 2003
Questa, NM - As the sun sets on the Sangre de Cristo mountains here in North Central New Mexico two hours up from Taos, the dun-colored topsoil turns as blood red as the name suggests. Long black shadows creep down the slopes in varying shapes: low and gnarly from thorny sagebrush; tall and majestic from oak, pinon and pine trees; and squat, shaggy and handlebar-horned from roaming yak.
Yes, yak. Those woolly animals originally from the Himalayan mountains have, of late, been turning up in ranches all over the Western United States and Canada. And although their numbers are still miniscule when compared to bison and cattle (there are currently about 2000 yaks in North America, 350,000 bison, and over 100 million cows), a growing contingent of ranchers are betting that, following in the footsteps of other low-fat, alternate red meats like venison and bison, yak burgers, stews and sirloins will soon be turning up on menus all over the country.
It may be a long shot, but, given the quality of the meat, it's certainly possible. Yak has a nutritional profile that's as lean as venison or bison (with about 5% fat compared to about 15% fat for beef), but a flavor profile that some people find even juicier, sweeter and more delicate.
Certainly the populations of Tibet and Nepal think so. There, yaks have been an integral part of the culture for 5,000 years, where they are used as pack animals, and for milk and meat. But they're relatively new to this part of the world. Originally imported for exhibitions in zoos a century ago, ranchers have only been breeding them commercially for about 15 years. Since then, the number of yak ranches in North America has grown to over 30.
Tom Worrell, owner of Latir Ranch, the 3,300-acre property in New Mexico upon which 125 of these bovine graze, estimates he is the third largest yak rancher in the region. According to him, yaks may well be the ranch animal of the future, supplanting bison and even cattle.
Mr. Worrell, an entrepreneur who, in addition to raising yaks owns Dharma Properties, a company that builds eco-friendly resorts, is a solid man with blue eyes, a deep, leathery tan, and thick eyebrows as dark and bushy as a yak hide. He delights in the merits of his hairy, humpbacked beasts.
"They only eat about a third of what a cow eats and can forage for food without damaging the environment. They have small hooves and are nimble, so they can move over rough mountainous terrain. They don't need much attention. Unlike cows, you don't have to get up in the middle of the night and calve them [help them give birth]. They are pretty disease resistant so they don't need any hormones or antibiotics. And unlike bison, they are docile and easy to maintain," he said.
Since yaks thrive in forbidding, rocky landscapes at 14,000 feet elevations, they can easily forage enough food in places that most cows could never even reach. Most ranchers leave them alone to graze whatever grasses, weeds and wildflowers they can find. In winter, the yaks are in their preferred element, cavorting in the snow without the need for shelter, and eating ice instead of drinking water.
"Yaks are what you'd call free-range animals," Mr. Worrell said. They are never put into feedlots, though some ranchers (excluding Mr. Worrell) add a percentage of grains to their diets a few weeks before slaughter. This will whiten their fat. Exclusively grass-fed meat will take on a yellow tint from the carotene in the vegetation.
"It's just for looks, American consumers aren't used to yellowish fat," said Bob Hasse, President of the International Yak Association and owner of Desert End Yaks in Montrose, Colorado, about 175 miles southwest of Denver.
Unlike in the cattle industry, whatever grain the yaks are fed is not laced with hormones or antibiotics. It doesn't have to be; the yaks don't benefit by it. Much of the meat, Mr. Hasse pointed out, would also fit the USDA regulations for organics, though none of the ranchers save for Mr. Worrell have gone through the paperwork. All yak meat sold today is inspected and certified by the USDA. But only Mr. Worrell's yak meat can legally wear the "organic" label.
On Mr. Worrell's land, the yaks are reared by ranch manager Chuck Kuchta. With his worn Levi's, 10-gallon hat, and bowlegged gait, Mr. Kuchta is the very picture of the southern New Mexican cowboy he once was. But don't call him a cowboy. And definitely stay away from "yakboy."
"We like to say Chuck's a recovering cowboy," Mr. Worrell said, "you've got to be careful about what you call him. For a while we were saying Yakeroo, but I think Chuck prefers Yakalero."
Whatever the term, Mr. Kuchta is one of a small group of ranchers that have made the switch from cattle to yak, some going by way of bison, or American buffalo. But why should yak succeed where other exotic meats such as ostrich and emu (remember emu?) have failed? And then there is bison market, suffering from a huge oversupply of meat after a decade of speculation (despite Ted Turner's best intentions). In the height of the bison craze, the animals were selling for as much as $3,000 each. Now the price is less than a tenth of that. (Currently yaks sell for between $1,000 and $4,000 each).
"The bottom fell out of the bison market because ranching bison doesn�t make sense economically," said Mr. Hasse. "You need more capital to start out with. You have to put in a lot of sturdy fencing, and bison are much harder and more expensive to handle and feed than yak. People wanted to raise bison because they have good eye-appeal. They look good on the plains, and there's a romance to having this native animal on your land. But they just aren't feasible."
This is because to their core, bison are wild, ornery creatures that don't take well to fences or, for that matter, to the people who keep them locked up. Because of that a ranch would need to employ more hands to manage an equal number of bison compared to yak or cattle.
"You can never turn your back on bison," warned Mr. Hasse, "they're too aggressive."
Mr. Kuchta, who has also raised bison in his post-cattle days, agrees that yaks are much lower maintenance. Domesticated yaks, he said, are so tame they are often considered family pets in Tibet. "You even hear stories about them sleeping inside the huts of their owners," he added. "I wouldn't try this with a buffalo."
Because they are grazing animals, both bison and yaks are easier on the environment than cattle. Of the three, yaks are the most efficient, needing the least amount of food, pound for pound. It takes six pounds of forage for a yak to gain one pound of body weight compared to eight pounds for cattle and 12 for bison.
Environmental concerns caused Mr. Worrell to start raising yaks three years ago.
"I'm not anti-cow," he said, "I'm anti-the way they are ranched these days. I'm anti-cutting down rainforests for cows, denuding African topsoil for cows, and large-scale cattle operations that don't care about their impact on the environment."
But even if yak are more environmentally friendly than cattle, and easier to handle than bison, finding a market for their meat is a challenge.
"Most people don't know what a yak is�that it's a Himalayan bovine�related to a cow," said Jerry McRoberts, who has been raising yak for 15 years at McRoberts Game Farm in the Nebraskan panhandle near Sidney. "But if you get them to try it they love it."
There's a lot to love about yak meat, once you get over the relative strangeness of the idea. Although it's low-fat, the flesh is very succulent, with a deep crimson color and a mild rather than gamy flavor.
"It's sweeter than even farmed venison and more tender than buffalo," said Joseph Wrede, the chef of Joseph's Table, a popular restaurant (now in the process of relocating) in Taos, New Mexico. He likes to serve cubed yak meat in a savory stew with aromatic vegetables, or the ground meat made into "yakballs" with a heady red wine sauce over pappardelle pasta, or simmered into chili.
"We sell a lot of it. The people who are brave enough to try it really get into yak," he said.
There are about dozen restaurants in the Unites States that offer yak on a regular basis. They include De La Tierra at the Sundy House in Delray Beach, Florida, where Johnny Vinczencz coats yak tenderloin with a mustard crust and serves it with a truffled potato salad, and the Cosmopolitan in Telluride, Colorado, where chef Chad Scothorn likes to offer the steaks as a special using the same kind of sauces he would with beef.
De La Tierra, which is owed by Dharma Properties, gets their yak from Mr. Worrell's ranch. Mr. Schothorn buys his from Mr. Hasse, who, along with Mr. McRoberts, also sells the meat retail (see note). People who live in the western United States can occasionally find yak meat in supermarkets and health food stores, where, at about two-and-half times the price of beef and 50% more than bison, it remains a tough sell.
"A lot of people are turned off by the word. They think yak, yuck," Mr. McRoberts said. "We wanted to change the name to woolly Himalayan beef, but I don't think the USDA will ever approve it. Someone suggested we send it to David Letterman and have them come up with 10 alternate names for a yak. Who knows, it just might help."