Breeding birds of a different feather for meat or leather

0 Comments | Insight on the News, June 19, 1995 | by Tony Munroe

Ostrich farmers have increased ninefold since the late eighties. Entrepreneurs are hoping to create a market for a low-fat alternative to beef and capitalize on those established for leather and feathers.

Be quiet! " says Kenneth Bendall to the hissing Jezebel, the most cantankerous of the 300 ostriches -- and one of the few given a name -- at the Alpha Omega Ostrich Farm in Unionville, Va. "She's just mean, that's all." Most of the other ostriches are merely skittish 7-foot-tall birds that look like paleolithic leftovers.

Bendall oversees daily operations at Alpha Omega, one of a handfull of Virginia farms trying to make a go of it in the fledgling ostrich business. The industry is going through a shakeout as it moves from a breeder to a commercial market. "It's going to take time to develop a market for the meat, the leather and the feathers," says Bendall.

Ostrich farming has thrived for more than a century in South Africa, where supple hides are a money-making staple, and the American Ostrich Association, or AOA -- based in Fort Worth, Texas, the heart of America's ostrich country -- reports that its membership has swelled from 400 farmers in 1988 to 3,800 members now. The number of Department of Agriculture-approved slaughter facilities has surged from four to 28, most of them in the Southwest, according to Chuck Ball, executive director of AOA.

Ostrich advocates tout the meat as a healthier alternative to beef. The cooked flesh is red with as much protein as beef but less fat than beef, chicken or turkey. One ostrich yields about 60 to 80 pounds of meat in a "harvest time" of 12 to 14 months. It costs about $170 a year to grow a bird.

"The primary market for the meat thus far has been in white-tablecloth restaurants," says Ball, with eateries buying meat directly from farmers. Randall Warder, chef at the Mansion on Turtle Creek in Dallas, says ostrich has become the most popular item on the menu since it was introduced a little more than a year ago. An ostrich entree costs $40, compared with $48 for lobster and $36 for either ribeye steak or antelope. Warder's signature dish combines a Texas-style ostrich chili and seared ostrich fillet.

At $17 to $27 a pound wholesale, ostrich won't be served at Denny's anytime soon. Instead, the industry hopes ostrich will become popular and affordable enough to find its way into midpriced steak houses and gourmet groceries. But whether a sustainable market can be developed for ostrich meat remains to be seen. It won't be commercially viable until it costs $12 or less a pound, says David Mazur, a Virginia-based purveyor of exotic meats.

The commercial market for ostrich leather already is established, however. Top-quality ostrich leather goes for about $38 a square foot. The feathers can be worth about $40 per bird. "The biggest trouble right now with ostrich is educating the public," says Bendall. "It'll take awhile. We started it as a long-term business."

Alpha Omega started with 10 breeding pairs and has about 40 now. Within two years, when James Anderson, who owns Alpha Omega, hopes to begin slaughtering, he expects to have 200 breeding pairs. "You can have an operation on a much smaller area of ground than you can, say, for beef cattle or buffalo," says Anderson. Breeding hens begin laying eggs at 2 or 3 years of age and produce at least 20 eggs a year -- usually many more than that, up to 100.

Month-old chicks sell for $2,000 a pair, 6-month-old birds sell for about $3,500 a pair and yearlings go for about $6,500 a pair. In the breeder market, five breeding hens conceivably can gross $100,000 a year. Adult ostriches are fed about three pounds of pellet food once a day; they also forage. Otherwise, they require almost no care. Full-grown, they can reach 8 feet in height and weigh up to 350 pounds.

Like Anderson, a physician, many ostrich farmers are pursuing a side career, notes Ball. Others are city slickers who've left the rat race to raise ratites. "On a positive note, these are pioneers," says Ball. "On a negative note, they're gambling."