Information about Ostrich Farming?Anyone who is a ostrich farmer?

Question

I'm doing a project on ostrich farming,and I tried looking on google to find any info I could find.I couldn't find the info I was looking for,so if someone could answer the following that'd be great:

Salary

Work hours

Length of career

What personality/character traits are required

What qualifications you need

Answer 1

yes

Answer 2

Farmers in general:

1) Salary: Farmers don't have salaries.  If they did they would probably all quit.

2) Work hours: Can see to can't see.  Then keep your books, pay your bills, etc at night.

3) Length of career:  Lifetime, if you are lucky.

4) Personality/character traits:  Someone who doesn't mind hard work, long hours, little pay, but loves being his own boss and working outside in the fresh air (and in the heat and freezing weather).

5) Qualifications:  Most farmers today are getting college educations, but it is not required.  The biggest qualification is experience, which is hard to get if you don't have any.  That's why most farmers are born into the life.

As to Ostrich Farming it would be about the same except you would also have to be flexible and you would be raising something else by now.

Answer 3

The "Garnet" fella above could not have said it any better.

Please give him 5 stars!

You can still write about it tho.

Studying or writing about markets that failed is just as important as the sucessfull ones.

Everybody only wants to tell about the sucessful people in the sucessful markets.

FYI Mike Rowe of Discovery Channel's "Dirty Jobs"

appeared on an Ostrich farm a couple years ago...

There is still a very small market for ostrich.

Meat, leather, feathers, hallowed-out eggs.

The market pretty much crashed about 7 years ago,

after about a decade of hype.

I knew this was going to happen because the rediculously high price for the meat never dropped down to a reasonable price as with most market items.  

And consumption and new consumers never increased enough to sustain the market.

Sure some people tried eating some,

but unless they and many others are willing to buy more to eat the following week, the market will never hold.  OR

Jordans were made of ostrich leather.

PBA is using ostrich eggs to bowl with.

US Airforce buys them to drop on Iraq

Pet-Rock eggs fad

Feathers to tickle your friend's fancy

When talking to Ag. folks,

I often refer to the Ostrich case as a "Pyramid Scheme".  

The first few breeders that got involved made alot of money during a few year span.

They convinced others to buy their expensive breeding stock so that they too could get rich.

Nobody wanted to slaughter stock, tho the meat would fetch high dollar, but the live bird were worth Much More as breeding stock to try to sell to yet other excited farmers...

Problem is, the pyramid collapses,

esp. since a true growing market could not be established.

The guys who bought in late did not make alot of money.

Other short lived or markets that tried to expand beyond their true capacity.

Mink, cinchilla, rabbit, worms, potbelly pig.

Buffalo is still being raised by several ranches, but it too reached a carrying capacity.

Yak (fiber and meat), minature cattle (meat and exotic pet) and hierloom breeds (meat, hobby farms, exotic pets) started a few years ago.

They too will probably only hit a certain level, just a niche.

As mentioned by "Garnet",

There are some animals that can do well becuase they are already being consumed by various people.

The ethnic market is sustaining much of it.

Species that increased in the past 10 years.

Goats- Hispanic, philipino, middle eastern,

standard breeds of chicken- same as above plus asian.

Heirloom breeds of goat and chicken will probably do well.

Wine grapes

Fish farming purhaps-catfish years back,

more recently talapia.

If you give me $250,000,

I will publish findings on the medical benefits of Ostrich gall

It's better than bear gall, oysters, shark fin,  monkey brain, tiger you-know-what etc.

This would drive the market up again.

Best Wishes!

Answer 4

Ostrich farming was a get rich quick scheme.  

Ostrich farming was doomed to failure, because they were trying to create a market.

People are extremely resistant to switching to foods they are not use to.  I do a LOT of research on foods.  It's a proven fact that in times of stress, people will allow themselves to starve to death (especially the elderly and young) than eat foods unfamilure to them.  

Almost all ostrich farmers went bankrupt, and many of them simply turned their stock loose rather than feed it (feral ostriches are a problem in some parts of Texas).

Salary...bankrupt

Work hours....24/7 for raising exotic livestock

Length of career....most were bankrupt in 3 years a few held on for 5 years.

Personality/character traits....the lack of ability to properly and prudently judge people and their purchasing habbits.  A gambler type who likes animals, but wants to get rich quick.

Qualifications...a way to get money to purchase your first breeding paird of ostriches.  Other than that absolutely zero qualifications.

I raise meat goats.  I've been raising them since 1999.  I'm one of the very few meat goat producers who does so sucessfully.  Part of my sucess was to study the very serrious mistakes the ostrich farmers made.  Beyond a shadow of a doubt their number one mistake was to try raising a meat animal you had to CREATE a market for.

You need to stick with animals people desire, demand, and WANT to eat.  That's why goats can be sucessful, because goat meat is the most eaten meat in the world.  For ostrich, you have to try and convince people to try it.  

They are not going to go out of their way to search for and purchase a novel meat.

~Garnet

Homesteading/Farming over 20 years

Answer 5

This is a wind-up yeh ? Ostrich farming is like any other farming, there is no salary, no fixed hours, you will work till you die.  No qualifications required other than the desire to work all the hours that god sends, a sense of humour and a dedication to all animal species.