Trip to the Musk Ox farm

This day started out with me taking a co-worker and her husband to Wasilla so they could pick up a rental car.  I had a few errands to run picking up a few groceries and a trip to the post office but after that I was undecided on what to do.  The weather man was predicting rain but the sun was out and the weather man is usually wrong here anyways, must be nice to have a job when you only have to make the right decision 10% of the time and nobody says anything.  After making my last stop at Lowes I decide the Musk Ox farm in Palmer would be a good thing to do, it is only 10-15 miles away anyways.

I get to the farm and it looks like any other farm not overly impressive but as I am standing on the back porch and taking a couple pictures of the Musk Ox a tour group comes out.  They charge $9 pp for the tour and I was still un-decided if I would take the tour but as I listened to the history of this animal I decided it would probably be worth it after all.  The farm is a non profit farm started by John J. Teal jr who in 1954 led an expeditiong to capture, domesticate and reed the nearly extinct musk ox for impoverished Eskimos and other natives of the Arctic tundras and coastlines.  The group was moving on so I just asked one of the employees if I just paid after the tour.

First stop were the 100 pound babies....

The story is that in order to capture the musk ox the team herded them into water and as they swam across divers captured the young by pulling them underwater to get them away from their protective mothers.


These are still being bottle fed and are being herded in for their feeding.



Next were the 2-3 year olds.......

These guys grow up fast!  They look like a bison and have hair like a sheep but actually belong to the goat family.  The survived the ice age because they eat half what the woolly mammoth eats and their hoofs are unique so they could tolerate the snow and ice.

 


This is one of the bulls and not willing to do anything but lay there in the warm sun.  It was pointed out by the guide how they got their name, there was a strong odor being emitted by this guy.  This musky odor is used to attract females during mating season







For more information on this farm follow these links:

http://www.muskoxfarm.org/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muskox

http://www.nytimes.com/1982/08/31/obituaries/john-j-teal-arctic-ecologist-the-leader-of-14-expeditions.html