Bison ranchers Nathaniel and Susan Ostashewski have been developing clothing products using bison hair for twelve years. They may finally be poised to see the versatile fibre break through.
For years, the market standard for high-quality insulated clothing has been goose down, exemplified by the Canada Goose brand. But as Nathaniel points out, “geese fly south.”
“Bison stay put and face the storm.”
The animals’ hair coats—and it’s hair, not fur or wool—serve them well through hot summers and freezing cold winters. But as ranchers the Ostashewkis saw that after the meat was cut from a bison carcass, the hide had no commercial value. Typically bison hides were simply trucked to a landfill.
For a number of reasons, including respect for the animals, they hated to see the hides discarded and wasted.
Bison hides are less suitable for making leather than cowhides, Nathaniel said.
“Bison hides are thick and inconsistent in size, and they have a hump,” he said. “The thickness of leather varies across the animal, so it’s pretty expensive to process. There’s limited interest in doing that when you have $5 beef hides that are all the same size, same thickness, and flat.”
The couple learned about a company in the U.S. that was making bison-fibre socks. The company needed a supply of fibre, and the Ostashewskis knew where to get it. Their O’Canada Bison Wool Corp was born.
“We actually shaved several thousands of hides over the next several years,” Nathaniel said. It’s a laborious process that uses sheep shears, but shaving hair off of an uneven bison hide is much slower than shearing wool off of a sheep.
The American company stopped operating due to the disruptions of the Covid-19 pandemic. The Ostashewskis’ company stepped in and bought their specialized machinery.
“We already knew they made socks, then they made jackets and other stuff. And so in the last three years, 2022 to 2025, we’ve pretty much replicated what they’ve done. But we make all our stuff in Canada,” Nathaniel said.
The big machine in the company’s Bonnyville shop is an Italian-made de-hairing line. It’s one of only six in the world, and the only one in North America.
In Europe, the machines are used to process cashmere. “Rather than sorting coarse and fine fibre out of cashmere, we have it for coarse and fine fibre out of bison,” Nathaniel said.
“We’ve been operating it pretty steady for two years now, so we’ve caught up to the backlog. And now we anticipate six months of the year perhaps we’ll be running some cashmere, and then six months of the year running our bison fibre.”
The fine bison fibre comes out of the de-hairing machine as light and fluffy as a cloud. That fibre can be blended with other natural fibres and spun into yarn—suitable for socks, mitts, toques, and sweaters.
The coarse hair is excellent for making felt for insoles and boot liners, or as batting to insulate clothing.
“When we go to trade shows, we talk to a lot of people that have used our socks in various places. One fellow was up in Churchill for two weeks taking photos of polar bears. He said out of 15 people, he’s the only one with warm feet because he had some of our socks and our liners,” Nathaniel said.
“So our stuff really does work.”
In addition to its insulating properties, bison fibre is without equal for wicking moisture away from the wearer’s skin. It is also anti-microbial, meaning it reduces or even eliminates foot odour from socks and insoles.
“Wool is a little bit like that. But when you get the bison, again, it’s a super version,” says Nathaniel.
“We’ve tested with some of the stinkiest people we know—meaning their feet—and after three days you can shove your face in the sock. No smell.”
The knitted products are an obvious use for the material,
but Nathaniel is even more excited by the potential industrial applications for the batting. Coats, jackets, bibs, gloves, even sleeping bags are among the possible products with industrial, commercial, or even military applications.
In the coming days, O’Canada Bison Wool is set to announce a partnership with a Métis company based in Alberta. Nathaniel says the partnership—51 per cent Métis owned, with O’Canada owning 49 per cent—will allow him to produce fibre and develop products while the partner company expands the client base and creates scale.
Nathaniel said he and Susan are hoping the partnership “will take our entire company to the next level, which is we can produce thousands of this and thousands of that.
“We’re a small mom and pop kind of thing, we don’t have the contacts globally or even around North America. They’ve got contacts and a network that extends far beyond.
“On top of that, they’re Indigenous. When it comes to the bison, we actually helped them set up a new bison herd for themselves, so that’s how we started working with them a year ago,” he said.
“We’ve become happy with our relationship with them, them with us. So it just seemed to progress to the next step.”
The partnership has the potential to bring a long-awaited payoff to the Otashewskis. It might have been relatively easy to create gift-store items as crafters or as a cottage industry if bison fibre was readily available. But they are the only source—they have to shave thousands of bison hides by hand, process the hair into yarn or felt, and make the products.
Nathaniel says through the long process they have been sustained by their faith—their religious faith, their faith in themselves, and their faith that good things will ultimately happen to good people.
They routinely give away their “factory seconds,” good but commercially-imperfect warm socks, to people living rough. They donate bison meat for First Nations and Métis ceremonies, and they offer their knowledge of bison to Indigenous communities that are setting up their own herds.
“We’re Catholics, so we pray,” Nathaniel said. “Hopefully, when you pay it forward, good things happen for good people that are doing good stuff. You have to have faith in that, I guess. You have to have faith that what you’re doing is what you’re supposed to be doing.”
First Nations and Métis people are known to have viewed the bison herds as a blessing, and were careful not to waste any useable part of a carcass. But commercial meat production has to measure efficiency in dollars, not as a function of use versus waste.
The Otashewskis, who are not Indigenous themselves but have friends and family who are, hate to see any part of the animals discarded and disrespected.
“What we’ve learned by going down this line, because we used to sell meat, is that all parts of the animal are magic. That fibre is absolutely magic. And then we have an entire line of tallow stuff, absolutely magic, healing, moisturizing, so we’ve made an entire line of products on that side as well,” Nathaniel said.
“We are just dedicated to the magic of bison, and wanting to make sure our grandkids know about it.”
