Elk Space Requirements

I have kept 6 to 8 in a ten acre pen which was irrigated and we could still swath and bale out of the pen. As good and wet as you are back there I would say one elk per acre would work.

No I started out with that ten acres and they did do fine. But the problem with elk is very few will die or kill themselves so they reproduce very fast. They just don't seem to get sick. We only lost one calf this year and that was because the calf died in the cow so we lost them both. In forty years we have never lost a cow during birth. None of the calves have even had any sickness problem and that is how it is every year.

Here is a eye stopper in elk. Most people look right past my brown elk and like these white elk. This is just a color variation and a white elk bred to a brown will produce on average 50/50 white or brown elk.

I like to see the bulls with antlers but it comes at a risk of one being killed. It would be best to cut antlers in August for the safety of the pen mates. We will cut antlers August 15th this year
We put big trees in the pen which we cut down so the elk bulls will work on that instead of the fence.

I feed grain to make the elk taste good just like we do cattle on slaughter cows. All that is needed is 30 to 45 days for that. I don't grain my bulls but do grain the cows. We start grain 30 days before breeding season and will do that for five months which carries us through winter. This makes nice size calves for us.

I'm sure we could do better with pellets and grain but selling prices don't justify that extra expense. Our pens are 60 to 80 acres for the elk in alfalfa fields. Some pens have a RFV of 219 which is very good. Calves are at cattle prices and cow not much better. Bulls are at 50% of the harvest price. Guys like me who depend on out of State sales are in a dying industry because as soon as they find CWD in our county we will not be able to sell out of State as most States will not take elk or deer if you county has CWD.

We have decided to sell out now on deer and elk while we can and only keep a few for our enjoyment and butcher our family meat from the deer we raise. Very sad what the CWD rules did to our industry. The industry people who thought they had a handle on how to keep in business sure were misled. Problem here is we work in good faith and F&G and Feds have an agenda which was to put this industry our of business. They really speak out of both sides of their mouth much like politics isn't it?