# Any one here get caught up in the 90s ostrich craze?



## red1 (Jun 19, 2007)

I built pens..built shelters. Bought a couple breeders..Had eggs..hatched them in an incubator I made..Raised them to 3 months old and sold them to a guy up north who fed them out to around 9 months. And then they went to a processor in mcpherson ks...Meat at that time was around $1.35 - $1.65/lb. Hides...large, no cuts..etc...were going for upwards of $250 - $300. Processing fees were 160$ ea. 

I don't know if there is much activity now...Meat was a hard sell..Going up against beef, it was no contest..Guys looked to hiring a marketing firm and getting the word out...Very pricy to do it right.

So I got out of it...sold the breeders..went out contract engineering..aerospace. Still have a bunch of 8'- "T" posts..6" rolled up chain link..


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## Ronney (Nov 26, 2004)

Back in the day, my partner wanted to get into this. I put my foot down - hard! And so pleased I did. It never went anywhere in NZ and sounds like it may not have gone too far in in USA either. It was expensive to set up the infrastructure and expensive to get the birds/eggs. There is an ostrich farm about 50kms from where I live that supplies to a niche market but that is the only one I know of. I'll stick with beef and sheep.

Cheers,
Ronnie


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## IndyDave (Jul 17, 2017)

It seems the same for most every exotic animal. The only winners are the people who introduce and hype the "new" animal and the ones who are in the first round of breeders making piggyback sales on the original hype. Everyone else spends a fortune on animals right before the prices drop like a brick.

Specific to the ostriches, I see the challenge that was not met as having been predestined to failure. It is somewhere between difficult and impossible to retrain your potential customers to be more sophisticated than they really are. I was in college when I became aware of the ostrich invasion. Even knowing the supposed benefits over beef, I couldnt get past the strangeness of it. I wouldn't be so peevish about it at this point in life, but then again, a great many people never change on this type of thing.


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## haypoint (Oct 4, 2006)

I've seen several fads come and go. One guy made his living selling a variety of "breeding stock". Not ostriches.
He got a 100 mustang mares and bought a Percheron stallion. Sold Mustang colts for awhile, until everyone realized they couldn't get the wild out of them. Then he sold Angora Goat breeding stock, until everyone realized they couldn't compete with Texas. Then it was Blue Fox breeding stock, until everyone found out you couldn't pen the males with the females and the females came in heat once a year. Miss that and you are feeding for a year without kits. Then it was Scottish Highlands. Promoted as surviving on brush, but only as long as their long hair hid there rack of bones. Then, there was a fad of growing buckwheat. Buy their seed and they promised to buy seed at market prices. But buckwheat isn't a commodity, so no market price, just whatever they offered to pay. Plus a frost killed the whole crop.

There was a guy in northern MN that brokered incubators. He was stuck with a bunch that had been converted to hold ostrich eggs.


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## barnbilder (Jul 1, 2005)

The key to raising ostriches, like any good MLM scheme, is you have to get in early, and not wait too long to get out. Else you become just another Karen selling essential oils on facebook.


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## ycanchu2 (Oct 21, 2011)

almost got sucked into that. I heard an ad about investing in an ostrich farm I think in texas. It took $10k...it sounded so good!
if i'd had the money i would have probably did it.....so glad i didn't now.


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## Terri (May 10, 2002)

The only fad that I can think of that lasted for any length of time was for Boer goats in Texas, and goat meat already had an established market in Texas. 

Some people lost money when the price of Boer bucks rapidly dropped, because goats breed so quickly, but nobody was left with animals that there was no market for. Boer goats are still being bred, but people can no longer get $5000 for a half Boer male (and yes I saw half-bred bucks going for that)


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## IndyDave (Jul 17, 2017)

barnbilder said:


> The key to raising ostriches, like any good MLM scheme, is you have to get in early, and not wait too long to get out. Else you become just another Karen selling essential oils on facebook.


I was thinking Ponzi scheme, but I like your observation about it amounting to a MLM arrangement. It brings to mind Amway working such that lots of people get in thinking they are going to get rich like the top producers who on reality have been in since George Patton was a mess cook and make something like 70% of their money on motivational tapes and speeches bought by the people who likely will never do better than buying their household products at a discount.


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## AmericanStand (Jul 29, 2014)

The problem was when everything sold as breeding stock.


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## Terri (May 10, 2002)

A friend of mine sold Amway near the end of the craze. 

They company decided to pay her in Amway products instead of in money. She ended up with hundreds of boxes of cleaning supplies that she never did get sold


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## RideBarefoot (Jun 29, 2008)

I was in Florida around that time. There seemed to be more people getting into emus rather than ostriches. When the bottom dropped out, some folks just turned the dang things loose rather than feed them. Fun critters to come across while riding a horse...


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## Alice In TX/MO (May 10, 2002)

The parents of one of my high school students invested her college savings in emus. Sigh.


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## emdeengee (Apr 20, 2010)

We did not get involved in the Ostrich craze. No money to buy stock and not convinced that people would buy the eggs and meat. Crazes are not new. The Tulip bulb bubble of the 1600s bankrupted tens of thousands of people and nearly the government of the Netherlands.


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## barnbilder (Jul 1, 2005)

The tulip boom and bust is an interesting snapshot in history that has played out many times.


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## mnn2501 (Apr 2, 2008)

Iraqi Dinars -- just wait.


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## Kmac15 (May 19, 2007)

I thought about it. I visited a farm about 3 hours away, when I asked what the market was she said that as that point they only sold to new breeders. That , then I saw one of them poop WOOW, at the thought of cleaning up all that made me decide to get chickens instead


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## haypoint (Oct 4, 2006)

barnbilder said:


> The tulip boom and bust is an interesting snapshot in history that has played out many times.


wow, you are going waaaaaay back....


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## JeepHammer (May 12, 2015)

I knew a guy that bought 4, was going to breed them for eggs.
The 4 males didn't get along all that well, no eggs.


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## ridgerunner1965 (Apr 13, 2013)

around here it was more emus. after the craze was over people were giving them away.

a guy gave us one locked in a horse trailer. DO NOT LASSO A EMU INSIDE A HORSE TRAILER AND PULL ITS HEAD OUT THE SLATS AND CUT ITS THROAT. well it wasn't our horse trailer but that emu made a dented mess of that trailer.

I was looking forward to a lot of breast meat. there was not one oz of breast meat on that texas turkey.

the breast was a big bone. the only meat was the legs and thighs. and trust me we skinned the whole bird.

we made some roasts and jerky out of it. both were perfectly edible as long as you cut all the fat off. the fat was not tasty but the meat was fine.


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## mreynolds (Jan 1, 2015)

People turned their emu's loose in Texas when they didn't sell. May as well call us the down under state. On the dirt road from Freer to San Diego (Texas) the emu's will stand in the road and wait for you to give them food. You better give them some too or they get mad. 

In Melrose Texas there was a wild Emu we called preacher. He hung out at the local Baptist church. You couldn't go near him or he would make threatening sounds and scratch at the dirt. 

I see them in the woods when hunting too. The second and third generation ones that don't like humans.


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## Alice In TX/MO (May 10, 2002)

I saw one near Columbus, Texas.


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