You can add to a bison herd about as fast as you can add to your own family. There's no rushing Mother Nature.
Bison meat has been selling so well in the Baltimore and Washington area that the people at Gunpowder Bison & Trading Co. in Monkton are wishing they could better keep up with demand.
"It's not like we can turn production around very fast to create more product," said Nathan Stambaugh, Gunpowder's director of sales and marketing. "We're trying to — slowly — but trying to do it the right way."
He said it will be six to eight months before the herd can grow even slightly. The average cow has only one calf per year.
"Right now, we're kind of holding steady, working on our breeding operation."
Promoted as more healthful than beef, as lean as turkey breast, bison meat has grown in popularity since Gunpowder began selling meat about six years ago. The company supplies 20 to 25 restaurants in Baltimore and Washington, and sells at several area farmers' markets.
In all, it is harvesting about 10 animals a week, yielding 450 to 500 pounds of meat.
All 200 pounds of burger meat Gunpowder took to the Baltimore Farmers' Market a couple of Sundays ago sold out before 9 a.m. — at $6.50 a pound.
"Business has picked up in the last six months," Stambaugh said. "We're actually selling everything we can produce. We are selling out on a regular basis at the farmers' market."
Some people have started calling Gunpowder ahead of time to place orders that they can pick up at the market. The company has also started a waiting list for restaurants that want to sell its meat.
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