Banking on Big Bird : Area’s Ostrich Ranchers Hope to Win Over Public

More than a dozen ostrich ranchers in north Los Angeles County have banded together to trade breeding tips and promote their big birds as the lucrative new livestock of the future.

Members of the loose-knit High Desert Ostrich Ranchers want other people to pull their heads out of the sand and pay attention to the range of products ostriches yield, from head to toe.

An ostrich produces lean, red meat, a hide that can be turned into fashionable boots and feathers that can become part of dusting tools. Its toenails can be used as a jeweler’s abrasive. Even the birds’ tendons, corneas and beaks have medical applications, the breeders boast.

“There’s not a product on the bird that goes to waste,” says Dick White, a Leona Valley rancher who helped organize the group.

White, a former cattle rancher who began breeding ostriches in 1989, now has one of the area’s biggest businesses, with 152 of the flightless, big-eyed birds.

Three years ago, White helped found the California chapter of the American Ostrich Assn. Earlier this year, he and other breeders from northern Los Angeles County, plus a few in neighboring Kern County, decided to form a local group to exchange ideas and promote the fledgling industry.

In August, several members set up an information display at the Antelope Valley Fair, bringing along several young ostriches to catch the attention of visitors strolling through the swine and sheep pens.

The group is now in the process of selecting officers and signing up new members.

Some north county ranchers who are just getting into the ostrich business say they’ve learned a lot through their ties to the new association. Bob Loving, a retired construction superintendent who bought three pairs of breeding birds two years ago, said fellow ranchers rushed to offer assistance recently when one of his ostriches became ill.

“What I love about this business is that there are so many great people, and they’re willing to share information,” said Loving, who lives in Agua Dulce. “If you have a problem with your bird, they’ll come over and help you. Nobody holds anything back. People are just willing to share the information.”

The word about ostriches is indeed getting around.

The ranchers say the big birds grow to a height of eight feet, weigh up to 350 pounds and can run up to 45 m.p.h. Although they are relatively docile, male ostriches become highly aggressive during breeding season and can inflict serious injuries with their powerful feet.

Kathy Byers is the first to admit she and her husband didn’t do much research before they spent $35,000 for a breeding pair of ostriches last year. The couple run a brush clearance and firewood business based in Castaic.

“This was a major brainstorm of my husband’s, that this was an up-and-coming industry,” Byers said. “We thought we could get into it and start making major money and get out of our (other) business.”

As it turned out, many of their ostrich eggs didn’t hatch, and many of the chicks that did emerge were not healthy. The ranchers were forced to trade one surviving 2-month-old chick to their veterinarian to wipe out a $2,000 treatment bill.

Byers said her husband often asks where the family’s savings have gone. “I say, ‘It’s walking around in the back yard,’ ” she said with a laugh.

The couple plan to stick with ostrich farming for at least one more year, trying to pick up tips from more successful members of High Desert Ostrich Ranchers. “It’s a fun industry,” she said. “The more people you meet that have ostriches, the more you can learn.”

Leona Valley rancher White says he has learned a lot since the day he bought his first two pairs of breeding ostriches five years ago.

Just as prices for the cattle he had been raising for two decades were dropping, White read an article that hailed ostriches as the livestock of the future because the birds produce meat that tastes like beef, but has far less cholesterol.

The ostrich industry, long centered in South Africa, began to blossom in the United States in the mid-1980s, particularly in Texas and Oklahoma.

As the numbers increase, more ostrich meat, now selling for $15 to $30 a pound, will begin showing up on the menus of gourmet restaurants and steakhouses, Ball predicted. That would suit Dick White just fine.

“I’d rather work with the birds than with cattle,” he said.