Johnson County Yak War?

Somewhere in the foothills of the Big Horn Mountains, a herd of yaks are on the loose -- and are stirring up a political fight. For the past five years or so, a group of the woolly Asian bovines have frequently wandered off of John and Laura DeMatteis' Yak Daddy Ranch, irking neighboring ranchers who worry that they eat their grass and could mate with their cattle. In April, three neighboring ranchers convinced the Johnson County commissioners to pass an ordinance declaring "yaks at large" to be nuisance animals. When the DeMatteises' yaks escaped again late last month, the couple was slapped with a $750 fine. But because of a legal error, that resolution was subsequently pulled and the fine voided. The Johnson County attorney's office is now drawing up a new, corrected resolution. John DeMatteis and his wife Laura, a Republican candidate for state representative, have been raising yaks on their 300-acre ranch for about eight years, selling them for food, wool and to other yak farmers. "I needed an ag exemption on my property, and didn't want to do cattle, and bison are kind of a pain," he said. "So then somebody suggested yaks, and I looked into them, and it made perfect sense with my property."...more