It’s Not <i> All</i> Happening at the Zoo : Many County Residents Are Keeping Exotic Animals as Pets and for Profit

Scanning the inland hills of North County, it might appear that someone left the back door to the San Diego Wild Animal Park ajar, allowing some of the exotic animals to escape.

There are emus, llamas, rheas, camels, West African crested cranes, bison, ostriches, peacocks, parrots and a dozen other species of exotic birds and animals existing happily among the common cattle, sheep and chickens.

Wild Animal Park officials do a daily hoof, paw and bill count on their menagerie and can find no AWOL fauna. But, they admit, there are a lot of creatures roaming about in the countryside east of Escondido that would be right at home in a zoo.

Take Joel Levin’s horse ranch near San Vicente Reservoir, for instance. Among the fillies and foals roam two emus--Louis Pasteur and Billie Jean King--and about 30 peacocks which he raises “just for the hell of it.”

The peacocks, when they throw their feathers into an NBC insignia, add color to the summer-brown landscape and the white males put on a feather show that is reminiscent of the delicate lace of a Spanish mantilla, he said.

On a ranch east of Ramona, John Mallon and Kathleen McLeod breed and train about 40 llamas. The Andes natives adapt well as pack animals for wilderness treks and lately have shown a superiority over any other beast of burden in toting avocadoes planted on steep hillsides down to level ground for sorting and loading.

Friendly, Intelligent

Llamas, McLeod said, are friendly, curious, intelligent, neat and clean, very economical to feed and, most importantly, bring about $8,000 each on the market. The husband-wife team has sold 19 so far this year.

“Every time a baby hits the ground, it’s sold,” McLeod said. For the cost of feeding a single horse, about seven llamas can be kept in high style, she said.

The most common question asked about the woolly animals is about their spitting habits. McLeod advises that, unless harassed, llamas behave like ladies and gentlemen.

“We’ve been in this business for about eight years, and we’ve yet to find a down side to it,” Mallon said. The only mild criticism he has for the surefooted beasts is that they are stoic, making it difficult to tell when a llama is ill or injured.

Though most of the animals he sells go to first-time owners going into the llama-breeding business as he and his wife did, Mallon does not fear the competition. The demand is far outreaching the supply, he said, and will continue to do so for the next decade or two.

Where else can you get a mobile lawn mower? (“We didn’t own a lawn mower for six years.”) And, what other animal can walk on delicate turf, such as golf courses, without tearing it up? McLeod sees a whole new market, mute caddies, for the doe-eyed beasts which she and Mallon have given such whimsical names as Llama Turner.

Emus, on the other hand, are “dumb and ugly” and of entirely no use at all, admits Levin, who acquired his pair “while sitting on a fence, swapping lies and horse trading.”

Warm Spot in Heart

The semi-retired electronics company executive confessed that the haughty birds have won a warm spot in his heart, however, and he still hopes that Louis and Billie Jean will come up with some offspring after a non-productive session this spring. Billie Jean laid five or six oversized eggs, Louis sat on the clutch, but the eggs apparently were infertile. “Maybe I jinxed her by naming her Billie Jean King,” Levin mused.

Wayne Schulenburg, San Diego Zoo bird manager, disputes Levin’s opinion that emus are stupid. He sees the Australian birds as the “missing link” between the prehistoric pterodactyl and modern bird species. Like its ancestors, the emu has a vestigial claw or hook at the end of its useless wings. Schulenberg points out that if the emu were so stupid, how did it outlast so many of its feathered brethren over the eons?

Schulenburg said that a number of North County residents are raising rare birds not so much for profit as for the preservation of the species. One of them he singled out was Lannom Farms in northern Escondido.

“There is no profit in raising most exotic birds,” Mary Lannom said, “but it must be done.” With the human race multiplying at a horrendous rate and pushing wild creatures out of their habitats, “the only way to save some species is by captive breeding.”

Along with parrots and other marketable birds, she and her husband, Joe, raise an emu or two and exotic West African crowned cranes, large, colorful birds with a spiked, “punk rock” headdress that bring their height up to about five feet.

“We make our living this way, raising birds,” she said. “It’s a 16-hour day, that ends about 11 at night with feeding the baby birds. I’m used to it,” she said. “I have seven children.”

Ostrich Raising

Another Escondidan, Dr. Arthur Stehly, does more than dabble in the unusual bird and animal kingdom. Two years ago, the obstetrician branched out into ostrich-raising and now is surrounded by about nearly four dozen of the imposing birds at his “home place” in eastern Escondido.

Stehly, raised on a farm, can’t quite get the hayseed out of his hair. He has, over the years, “raised about everything” from the camels to chickens and a large family, too. The past summer, nine of his own offspring ranging in age from 8 to 21 were around to help him with the chores.

Ostrich youngsters are friendly and fun, Stehly said. “They have their games and dances, and sometimes they get a little rambunctious,” he explained. Hazel, a family pet, was gentle “and let the children walk right under her,” but didn’t like Stehly, who had to keep his distance. After all, an ostrich can grow to a 300-pound, 8-foot-tall heavyweight with a mean karate kick.

Stehly’s knowledge about the big birds was earned from experience because “they haven’t published any books yet” on ostriculture. For beginners, “the hardest thing to remember is that they are defenseless newborns” for several months after they peck their way out of the shell, “because they are the size of a pullet”--a half-grown chicken.

Heat, cold, a scare or a slight injury can send a bird into a fatal stress out, he explained. “They just sit there, with their heads straight up in the air, not moving, not drinking, not eating. And in three or four days they drop dead. There is nothing you can do about it.”

When members of his barnyard collection grow too big to handle, too dangerous or too numerous, Stehly ships them out to his brother’s ranch in Valley Center where they roam, apparently contented among the more mundane animals. That’s what happened to some of the obstreperous ostriches and the camels, he said.

Becoming Big Business

Ostrich-raising has become a profitable venture, Stehly said, but he is in it “as a hobby,” for relaxation, although his morning, evening and weekend schedule of chores belie it.

Farmers in Oklahoma and Texas have turned ostrich-raising into big business, selling the hides, feathers and meat, he said. Ostrich leather boots bring $500 a pair, and South Africa can no longer ship in the 50,000 to 90,000 pelts needed yearly because of U.S. anti-apartheid sanctions.

As for ostrich meat, Stehly hasn’t tasted it yet, but it’s going to be a hit, he predicted, because of its low-fat, low cholesterol content and its taste, reputed to be a cross between pork and turkey.

He’s not sure he will turn his hobby into a vocation but admits that “it’s hard to get farming out of my system. I love farming, but I’m not sure I’d love farming all the time.”

Ken Childs makes no bones about hitching his star to the health food boom. He raises buffalo--more accurately, American bison--on the 1,000-acre Star B Ranch east of Ramona and cashes in on the demand for the unusual.

With 70 head of bison roaming the range and 20 more on the way, Childs has his hands full. The shaggy beasts roaming the hillsides are an impressive sight and appear to be a docile and amenable bunch, but pen them up and they become skittish and unmanageable, he explained.

The main market for buffalo are fellow breeders wishing to cash in on the trend toward lean, low-cholesterol meats, Childs said, driving prices up and up.

A recent national survey of meat prices showed beef cattle prices in a slump and buffalo meat on the rise. A pound of ground buffalo sells for about $4.50 in a gourmet market. A pound of prime buffalo steak costs about $14.