How to Start a Successful Ostrich Farm

Starting an ostrich farm is an adventurous step for anybody. To set up the ostrich farm, land, labor, water, licenses, and cash flow are mainly needed. Hopefully with a little thought we can examine some aspects that you need to consider, before embarking upon your own ostrich project.

Land

You need to consider how you are going to use the land you have. Depending on what starting option you decide, you need to make decisions as to how much land you wish to dedicate to. You may wish to consider other building space for your offices, farm shop or living/rest area for workers.
A trio, one male and two female, is the normal grouping for ostriches, but you may equally consider pairs (one male and one female), quads (one male and three females) or colonies (two or more males to two or more hens).
A pair gives you the ability to track the individual performance of each of your breeders. A trio gives you the ability to track the male and maybe the females, as sometimes the eggs from two females are noticeably different. The space that you need for a breeding trio is approximately 30 meters (32 yards) by 50 meters (55 yards) – a total of 1500 square meters.

For chicks, they really need little space during their first four weeks of age. Let us say 2 meters (2 yards) by 10 meters (11 yards) for a group of 20 chicks, however they grow remarkably quickly. All the bird areas should have shade in some form or other. It may only be shade-cloth or use the natural resource of trees within the pens, but some form of shade is essential.
Birds need to get out of the sun if they wish to. When it rains however, you will find that they sit down on the spot and don’t seek shelter.
In the event that you decide to have your own incubation facilities you need to consider the room dimensions you require and this will depend upon the incubator and hatcher you buy. You need one room for the incubator, one for the hatcher, and a cleaning area to wash your eggs with an optional storage area for storing eggs before setting them in the incubator.

Labor

Adult birds should be fed twice a day, once in the morning, once in the late afternoon.
Chicks should be attended at least 5 times a day, the incubator checked daily with setting eggs once a week and hatching twice a day. All this takes human labor. Another labor intensive task is the cleaning of the chick pen to prevent them eating their own dirt (dependent upon stocking density, surface and age of chicks). Similarly setting eggs in the incubator and cleaning the hatcher are time consuming activities.
Besides the farming tasks on hand, the majority of farming is supervision. Prevention is better than cure, and solving problematic areas before they occur can save time and expense. Constant supervision will help, but generally the breeders are best left to themselves except for feeding and egg collection. It is possible to move a bird with one person, but with two or more it is so much easier and less stressful. You need to consider – do I have the time? Or do I have the finances to pay a farm laborer or laborers?

Water
Your birds will need access to water 24 hours a day. You need to consider that when you design your pens, you may need to consider the cost of supplying water. If you are in a cold climate, you may need to consider the cost of installing water heaters to maintain a constant water temperature of 20 degrees centigrade for all groups of birds and not simply free from ice. Ostriches like to scoop and as a result of the feed in their beaks, the water trough gets dirty quickly and therefore needs cleaning regularly. Birds need constant access to water as this will affect their consumption of dry feed.
Water too cold or too hot will affect their water consumption and often result in reduced feed intake.

Permissions

You will need to consult your national ostrich organization or your local agricultural board for advice on what permissions are mandatory for starting an ostrich farm in your own country. Some countries such as Germany require that you complete a course on ostrich husbandry. Fortunately other countries are not as strict and view ostrich farming just the same as any other farming activity.

• License for the ownership of birds
• License for the transportation of ostriches
• The construction of a death ditch to place birds that die
• Veterinary inspections
• Biosecurity measures such as a vehicle entrance dip where the wheels of vehicles entering your property need to go through disinfectant.

Finance

You will obviously need capital to set up your enterprise. You will also probably have some idea as to how much you can afford to dedicate to this. My advice is half it! Don’t borrow money either! It is only when you start selling your marketable products will you have some form of clear perception as to whether it is profitable for you.
We have seen many times the following pattern. New farmers spend a lot of money in trying to get the best “nicest” facilities and NO PLAN. I have seen chick facilities like mini-hotels! And totally impractical. And then when it comes to the important stage of actually marketing their produce, they have run out of funds as production has not been what was expected. My recommendation is keep things simple. Use what you have at hand – adapt the fencing you already have and use buildings that are already constructed.
Where I do consider it necessary to spend is on your incubator. A good incubator will give you good results, a bad one will not.

Farming Options

There are various ostrich farming options you may wish to consider.

1. Full cycle
This tends to be the norm. You have breeders, they lay eggs, you do the incubating and hatching, and then you grow out the chicks to slaughter age. The best part of this is that you are in control and responsible for each stage. You have nobody to blame but yourself if things go wrong.
You may also find that your geographical location is such that there are no local incubation facilities to use, so you have no option but to do this yourself.
On the other hand if your farming enterprise is large, you may need others to grow out all your chicks. Your resource of land may be limited, or you prefer to do this to limit risks.
The financial layout for this sort of enterprise is the largest as you are doing all the stages.
Generally speaking, as the ostrich industry matures, there is more specialization as each farmer tends to concentrate on what he does best.

2. Breeder
Some farmers only have breeders and sell their eggs. This is their income.

3. Incubation Facility
You may decide to have an incubation facility only. That is farmers pay you for the service of hatching their eggs or purchasing eggs to sell on as day old chicks.
A good incubation system is very expensive and therefore requires significant capital investment.
Before embarking upon setting up an incubation facility you need to assess if there is demand from farmers in your area to incubate or if there is a supply of eggs you can buy.
Typically a farmer would pay something as a down payment for you to set the eggs and an additional payment for a hatched chick that you return to the farmer. Recording is of the greatest importance to ensure that the correct owners receive their own chicks.

4. Growing Out Facility
The least expensive option. You buy chicks at a certain age and you feed the birds to slaughter age. This option could be particularly attractive to a first-timer especially if there is a contract involved for the repurchase of the slaughter bird.
But now beware! So many of these buy back schemes have failed in the past through the inability of the person offering such contracts to market the produce at a sufficient price to give him any adequate returns. In other words these buy back promises are not fulfilled and in some cases were used as a sales gimmick to make a chick sale. The farmer is then left with birds and has to market them himself.

5. Regional Groups
I am in favor of regional groups as farmers can become self-supporting. Working in volume helps in all aspects. The farmers all have breeders and all supply the eggs to one person. Each farmer gets one lot of chicks on a weekly rotation basis. This means that farmer one gets all the chicks hatched in week one, farmer two all chicks hatched in week two etc. This system is truly collaboration so that no single chick is left stranded on its own and it is just as easy to manage 5 chicks as it is 20 chicks. What’s more the farmers all use the same feed which all helps to produce a consistent product. Buying in bulk enables these farmers to get better prices.

Food costs constitute 60-70 of the total cost in ostrich industry. Thereupon, this understanding is very important at the beginning=onset of this business=industry It is not the cost of your feed that is important – it is the difference between the revenue of your slaughter bird in comparison to the cost of producing that slaughter bird that is the important factor. Calculating the cost of the egg, the chick, the slaughter bird are all important indicators, as are the higher revenue obtained from higher output (number of eggs, no. of chicks, kgs. Of meat, larger skin). So many people fall into the trap of looking into the feed costs without considering the production abilities of the different options and the implications that a better feed gives you so much more and helps to reduce losses such as infertility, hatching problems and chick mortality.
A good ostrich feed should have
• Forage to provide quality fibre eg. alfalfa
• Grain for energy eg. maize or corn
• Protein Ingredient for protein eg. dehulled soya
• Minor and major minerals
• Vitamins
• Other natural additives such as Amino Acids, Yeast

For fiber for example, alfalfa comes in various protein levels. It is recommended that you can get alfalfa as fed of at least 18%. A higher quality alfalfa has so many better characteristics such as improved digestibility, higher vitamin and mineral content, to that say of one of lesser quality.
Equally for maize, a farmer should strive to obtain 8% protein, as opposed to the lower quality of 6%.
Soya normally comes as 44% or 47% where the 44% contains soya hulls. Again we are looking for soya as a protein source, and the 47% is recommended.
It is the vitamin and mineral packs that contain the punch of the feed. Here it is not only the values of such components but the form in which they are provided in combination with one another, so that the ostrich can use “the punch” to its full effect. Calcium provided in one form may be indigestible to an ostrich, and therefore the balance with phosphorus will be out, which could lead to severe problems. It is through attention to nutrition combined with good feed management, good farm management, and genetic selection, that your slaughter birds can reach meat yields in excess of 30 kgs per bird as opposed to 25-30 kg which is today seen as the norm in places like Australia and South Africa.

6. Marketing
Starting an ostrich farm is easy. Making it a profitable enterprise requires an assessment of how you intend to market your ostrich products.

Live Birds

Some farmers may wish to breed for the live bird market. Though this helps cash flow in the short term, and the returns can be high depending in which country you operate, you need to consider what happens when the live bird market is saturated – that is there is no more demand for live birds. You need to be prepared to investigate who is buying slaughter birds and the conditions of sale. This is the commercialization stage.

Slaughter Facilities

In the event that you have no buyer for your slaughter birds, you may need to consider slaughtering the bird yourself and marketing your produce. You will need to know where the nearest slaughter facilities and their costs are for providing this service or if considering setting up on sufficient scale to construct your own facilities. In South Africa, often it is the farmers that own the facilities and they operate on a quota basis. The slaughter facility in European Union opens the doors for you to market meat into the lucrative market of Europe, where demand for ostrich meat is highest. Working in volume with other farmers in your area, perhaps forming a cooperative, should help you in reaching larger markets for your ostrich produce.

Marketing Meat Products

The problem with meat is that in the fresh state it is a perishable product. You need to sell it as soon as possible as typically ostrich meat will have a shelf-life of 21 days if vacuum packed.

Marketing Ostrich Skins

Skins need to be stored for example between 4 and 10 C – and never freeze them.
Don’t forget too that ostrich leg shins also have a small value, but must be centered so that the scaling is in the middle. Similarly the market demands big leg skins that go above the “knee” and go down to the toe. ????

There is a lot of untapped potential here for marketing ostrich feathers. It’s also a much closed community where the secrets of cleaning and dying ostrich feathers are not divulged.
Ostrich feathers can be used for decorations of all types eg. floral decorations, interior design, wedding pieces, costume making, hats or converted into ostrich feather products such as boas and feather dusters.
Feathers have an anti-static quality, which make them ideal for the car painting industry to remove dust, but this is a market that few will reach. There are also many different types of feathers. The most prized are the large white male feathers with a natural drooping, but there is demand for others as well such as the tail feathers. Perhaps it is not an income that you should count on in your initial cash projections, but one that you should think about for the future.

Marketing Ostrich Egg Shells

At 14 days, you candle eggs to see if they are fertile or infertile. Infertile ones are removed. These can be emptied by drilling a small area at the base, the contents removed and the interior disinfected.
These empty clean white egg shells also have value. It is surprising how many people want them as purely decorative items in their houses.
Some people paint them and sell them as farm souvenirs.
There is also an “egg-crafting community”. People who carve eggs to make displays, lamps or simple containers.
Again, probably best not to count on this as income when you are starting, but again you have a marketable product.

Ostrich oil

3000 years ago, ostrich oil was mainly used in Egyptian, Romanian, and African cultures, as cosmetic products and as pain and rheumatism treatment as well.
Related Historical documents, came back to ancient times namely 1st century A.D., refer to the all-encompassing use of ostrich oil for wound-healing, burns, skin disorders, eczema, skin and hair dryness etc. Ancient people applied these procedures for one hundreds of years. The roman scientist, known as Pliny, has been written about the Ostrich Oil benefits in the first century A.D. Nowadays, we know that Ostrich Oil is basically rich in essential fatty acids such as omega 6, and omega 9. The essential fatty acids help to maintain the health cell membrane, improve the use of nutrients and regulate cell metabolism. Moreover, these acids provide those raw materials which are commonly helpful to control blood pressure, blood clotting, body temperature, and other body functions. As a matter of fact Omega 6 and omega 9 are both moisturizers.