Comrade Cowboys

Tazy: Speedy Dog of the Steppes in a Race Against Extinction

“Faster!” Zhylkybai Aga said.

The driver increased the truck’s speed to 25 m.p.h. Zhylkybai leaned out the window andwhooped at his dog, named Akbakai, who loped alongside the vehicle. The lanky dog…

Home, Home on the … Steppes?

A great migration is underway in the world of cattle ranching. Cowboys from the United States, Canada, and Australia are taking cattle herds numbering in the thousands to start ranches on the Eurasian steppes. Why? Because the people of Russia and Kazakhstan have asked for their…

The (Questionably) Honorable Kazakh Tradition of Livestock Theft

With 2,500 head of livestock, it can be hard to notice when a few go missing. Especially for Dauletgali Zhaitapov, whose business Kaz Horse Mugalzhar LTD operates on 75,000 acres of unfenced rangeland in northern…

The First (And Only) Russian Ranch Video Awards

Now that all the hullabaloo of The Oscars has died down, I direct your attention to Russia’s movie industry where Westerns are all the rage.

Not Westerns of the Clint Eastwood variety, but promotional Western videos about…

Ranching May Offer Soviet ‘Ghost Farms’ of Kazakhstan New Life

On the steppes of northern Kazakhstan, a collective farm town called Chilinka Sovkhoz crumbles, abandoned. The 250,000-acre farm was once home to over 60,000 livestock (mostly sheep, but also cattle and horses), and an…

25 Years After the USSR

Television sets manufactured in the USSR would sometimes spontaneously explode. It’s hard to say exactly what the…

Video: The Fulbright-National Geographic Digital Storytelling Fellowship

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