Ostriches Taking Off : Demand Outpaces Supply of Big Birds at Circle M Breeding Ranch in Sonoma

Here in the fields of Sonoma, grapes grow, cattle graze and horses whinny. And ostriches sprint.

At the Circle M Ranch, Bob and Carolyn McKean raise ostriches--the largest bird on earth--for sale. They have a waiting list of more than 30 people who want to buy chicks at $2,000 each. A pair of breeding adults costs $25,000 to $30,000. A few of the birds wind up as pets, but most are bought for breeding by other would-be ostrich ranchers.

“People want to get into the business, like someone wanting to get into the cattle business or chicken business,” says Bob McKean, 53, who figures that he and his wife became the first ostrich ranchers in the West since the 1930s when they bought four adult couples last fall. On their 20-acre ranch an hour and a half drive from San Francisco, the McKeans now have 28 birds in pens and a brooder house and another 25 eggs in an incubator.

On a recent Saturday, a secretary and an electronics technician who had spotted the McKeans’ birds from the road stopped in, wondering about the profits in ostrich ranching. The week before, two Utah residents wearing ostrich-hide boots bought four birds. A Pasadena man came to fetch four chicks and drove them home in his pickup. And some 400 people, including prospective breeders in Saudi Arabia, Mexico and Belgium, have bought the McKeans’ $12 how-to booklet, “The Wonderful World of Ostriches.”

“Everybody who can find a bird with a long neck and two toes has bought them,” says Ken Roberts of Okie Ostrich Ranch in Marlow, Okla.

The U.S. ostrich industry has taken off because U.S. trade sanctions against South Africa imposed in 1986 disrupted the main supply source for ostrich hides, which are used for boots and other items.

But this is not the first time ostrich farms have prospered in the United States.

In the late 1800s, with ostrich feathers all the rage, ostrich farms sprang up across the country, including in South Pasadena and Fullerton. But the austerity of World War I, the popularity of the automobile (the plumes on your hat blew away when you were driving) and changing fashion killed the feather industry, and the farms disappeared.

Demand for Accessories

American ostrich farming remained sleepy until the mid-1980s. At the time, the United States was importing 90,000 ostrich hides a year from South Africa, virtually the sole supplier.

But with ostrich boots--which can sell for as much as $700--purses, belts and and other items in increasing demand, American ranchers began to get interested.

Among the first was Bernadine Moore of Inola, Okla., who raised catfish and longhorn cattle. The Moores began with three breeders in 1983, according to Moore, 61, who now has 42 ostriches. Moore now publishes a monthly newsletter, Ostrich News, which is widely read in the industry.

Then, U.S. anti-apartheid trade sanctions against the South African government banned the import of ostrich hides from that nation. Although hides continue to reach the United States from Botswana, other African nations and Israel, the business became more attractive to domestic ranchers.

“People started hustling the zoos, parks, wherever, for the birds. Prices went from nothing for the birds to pretty fabulous prices,” says McKean.

Eighteen months ago, the breeding pair now priced at $30,000 cost $10,000; a year ago, the two cost $20,000, McKean says. And he thinks the price will rise to $45,000 to $50,000 within a year.

5,000 on U.S. Farms

Although wanted mostly for its hide, “the whole bird’s marketable,” says rancher Roberts. Its silky feathers--white, jet-black and smoky gray--grace Geoffrey Beene jackets and are used in feather dusters. Its meat tastes like beef, breeders say, and even its toes are sought for jewelry and curios.

For now, the hides, toes and meat come from birds slaughtered overseas. The estimated 5,000 ostriches on U.S. farms are being spared of slaughter and used instead to breed and build up the flock, ranchers say. “We need 150,000 to 200,000 before we can justify killing them for a slaughterhouse. It’ll be 10 years down the road (before that figure is reached),” says Leon Vandiver, president of the National Ostrich Breeders Assn. in Bethany, Okla.

McKean started breeding ostriches after reading in the San Francisco Chronicle about people in Texas and Oklahoma making fortunes in it. He was phasing-out of the quarter horse business, which had “gone sour,” and was looking for something else to set up on his ranch. He started with eight ostriches imported from Missouri.

Much of the paper work and the ostrich care is done by his wife, as McKean is also a full-time captain for the Golden Gate Ferry Service, shuttling commuters across San Francisco Bay. Carolyn McKean, 42, monitors the two laying hens, which have produced about 75 eggs each since February, a “very good” rate by breeders’ standards. And with feeding, cleaning pens, checking temperatures of the incubator and hatcher, and giving tours to drop-in visitors, her work day can last 16 hours, she says.

At age 2, ostriches begin to lay eggs, which take 42 days to hatch, Bob McKean says. The mottled brown newborns stay warm under infrared lamps in the brooder house and dine on kibbled dog food, medicated turkey mash, game-bird feed, bone meal and rabbit pellets. A radio tuned to a station that features “easy listening” melodies by Neil Diamond, Barry Manilow and others hangs in the brooder house “to keep stress down.”

250 Breeders

A little under a foot tall when they hatch, ostriches spurt up to about 6 feet in less than a year. By the time they mature in their second or third year, they are 7 to 8 feet tall. Adult males weigh about 350 pounds and females, about 275.

Adult ostriches are fed rabbit pellets and steer feed. Laying hens get a bonus of “trout chow,” which is mostly soybean meal, “all the oyster shell they want” and vitamins, McKean said. He estimates that to feed an adult bird it costs 30 cents a day and a laying hen, 40 to 45 cents.

Three ostrich associations and an estimated 250 breeders, mostly in Oklahoma and Texas, have sprung up in the United States in the last three years, but McKean is not worried about competition.

‘I’m raising these birds to make competition. The more people in business, the more we’ll learn, the more I’ll learn, and the more efficient we’ll get,” he says. “We’re still learning. It’s a lot of trial and error. Any way we can get knowledge to do the business is important, to make the business grow.”

McKean spoke as he stood next to a pen containing Big George, a stately 8-foot, 375-pounder. Nearby, four yearlings hoisted up their wings and broke into a graceful gait, being chased by the McKeans’ dog. A few hundred yards later, they stopped, loped back and began to prance in circles.

No, says McKean, they don’t bury their heads in sand. “The birds--especially the young--flee when they’re frightened,” he says. “When they run from a predator, they’ll sit in the grass, flat on the ground--their legs folded underneath them. Their long neck lays flat on the ground. . . . So I assume people saw this and thought its head was in the sand.”