A few stalwart producers are trying to rebuild the tattered ostrich industry.
They say markets are finally developing for the big birds’ meat, hides and oil.
But they say this time they’re going to develop the industry the way any agricultural industry should be done: find the markets, then ramp up production to supply the demand.
And they won’t try to do it all by themselves.
“What we do best is produce,” said Saskatoon ostrich breeder Randy Meginbir. “We can’t be out there marketing and selling.”
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Meginbir said ostrich hide prices have recently been rising, meat demand is growing and oil products may soon be produced in commercial quantities.
That means there is now real demand for ostrich products, not just the potential demand the industry built itself on last time.
The ostrich industry became infamous for its amazing growth in the early 1990s and brutal collapse in the mid-1990s.
To many producers it was the classic case of a breeding market gone wild, a speculative frenzy that built a bubble that burst when ostrich owners found they couldn’t sell their breeding stock, and there was no commercial market for ostrich products.
Meginbir estimates there are now fewer than 30 ostrich producers in Saskatchewan. At the market’s peak there were more than 100.
Meginbir isn’t a producer who got in when prices were cheap, rode the wave up and survived the crash. He started in 1995, purchasing a male and two females for $3,500. At the peak of the frenzy, breeding pairs sold for up to $60,000.
Instead of building a new barn, putting up an extensive system of fences and pens and bringing home a flock of birds, he boarded his three birds until he could set up a modest operation.
“My wife and I said to each other: ‘We’re not going to get into (an expensive operation). We will start small and get bigger, but we’re not going to start big and go to nothing.’ “
They now have 23 breeding birds, which should produce about 300 eggs per year, of which 85 percent should reach maturity as breeding or meat stock.
Meginbir survived the last few years of weak prices and low demand by being careful with his expenses and by boarding other people’s birds, which brought in money monthly.
On this day he was shipping an injured bird to a small abattoir at Pike Lake, on the other side of Saskatoon. Dennis Penner, who owns the plant, helped Meginbir hood and load the bird, then sat down to have a coffee and discuss the industry’s future.
Penner recently opened his plant and hopes to specialize in ostrich. For that he needs a steady supply of birds.
A March 26 meeting in Saskatoon, will feature an American ostrich meat buyer. As well, oil and hide processors will try to set up supply relationships with farmers.
Meginbir said a number of oil and meat processors may soon open in Alberta, and that will create a demand for birds.
He thinks producers should set up a marketing board, or hire professional marketers, so they can concentrate on production.
As a director of the revamped Saskatchewan Ostrich Association, he said the group knows it will have to convince others that the ostrich business is legitimate, and not just a breeding market pyramid scheme.
“No doubt people burned once won’t want to rush back in,” said Meginbir, who raises both ostrich breeding stock and meat animals.
“But it’s like anything – if you see your neighbor doing something different and he’s making big money at it and has a nice new truck (you might follow his lead).”
Meginbir said the people now in the industry are real producers, not hobbyists, so even though the ostrich flock is small, it could have a good future.
“How can an industry be dead that never got started?”
