Any Ostrich breeders? - Page 4

I wonder if you can caponize a male ostrich like they do cockerals...... So they would be more docile... Hehe

Actually, it seems like a perfectly good idea.

 

Supreme Emu

Hi,  P09. I’ll leave the more technical stuff to the knowledgeable members – but look if it this way:

 

any feed will work pretty much okay for a while. The birds wouldn’t starve. I think it’s a question of long-ish-term nutritional balance, which takes you back to reading about the contents of the feeds.

 

Try ‘Swarbrick Emu Husbandry Guidelines.’ Yes, it’s about emus; but it will introduce you to the idea that you need to be able to go to the feed-store and say, ‘Hi, do you have a feed that’s high in X, with some Y and Z supplements?’ I’m a novice gardener, and I’m learning similar things: you can pile Good Stuff A, B, and C onto your pea plants, and . . . nothing much happens. Then, if put Good Stuff Z on them, they thrive.

 

How much grass can an ostrich eat? Well, think about loading a pickup truck with a pair of tweezers. That is, they must spend hours and hours grazing every day when they are in a natural environment – emus do. I think that if the birds have an elegant sufficiency of space, and that space generally has a good coverage of grass, then the ostriches will be getting enough grass.

If I may:

 

I suspect that ‘grass’ is not quite simply the answer. In the wild, ostriches and emus eat a wide range of foods: berries, seeds, flowers, and grass – and we can argue later over whether they also eat snakes, bugs, insects, etc.

 

Have about this for an ‘equation’: the birds need (a) certain nutritious ‘inputs,’ and (b) they need something – like grass – as a ‘vehicle’ to get the inputs in one end and out the other. Humans are the same: you could probably get enough nutrition from pills, but I think you’d be in trouble after a while if you only ate pills. Sneaking the pills into a wholemeal cheese-and-tomato sandwich would be a great idea.

 

So, Wild Bird: has evolved in its environment. Eats certain things in certain quantities at certain times. Result: healthy bird

Pet Bird: has evolved with same needs, but isn’t in a natural environment. Grass – roughage, the sandwich – is the ‘primary vehicle’ of those needs. (Swarbrick notes that the emus where she studied got a kilo of fresh silverbeet a day as roughage.) So, grass is good and necessary; but so are the things that the birds usually also get from the seeds and berries. Determine what those things are. Supply them to the birds. Result: healthy bird.

 

I note that my emus love every non-grass thing they can get. For example, they spend hours foraging (just like giant chickens!) under the lilly pilly tree for lilly pilly berries; and in Spring, I have the hilarious sight of seeing vicious dinosaur girlie bird come up to me with a yellow flower hanging from the corner of her mouth.

 

Supreme Emu

Ratite feed isnt worth it, its way too expensive, and a Ostrich can easily eat a 50lb bag of feed a week per bird. A grassed pasture definitely helps, but wont provide enough nutrition. All Stock dry pellets at Tractor Supply is fine for them, and only costs around $10/50lb. I still feed this to my Emus and Rheas and they are healthy, and produce chicks every year. You can feed them dog food also which will be higher in fat and protein. Brand doesnt matter. They eat alot of insects and reptiles in the wild, and the insects in Africa are alot larger than ours and more available.

Hi everyone !! We are in the process of getting our ostrich breeders together. We have hatched several ostrich since last June and bought numerous. As of now we are left with two males who are barley breeding age. Next week will be getting a female and working in getting one more female. Hoping to be selling chicks next year.

As far as fencing, the higher the better is right!
We are new to this and Still learning every day. I have heard that the male breeders do get nasty. They say the reds are the worst. We don't have those thank god.