Ostrich Farming For Beginners

Ostrich Farming For Beginners

Cost Of Starting An Ostrich Farm

Welcome to our first chapter, What you need to Start an Ostrich Farm, which looks at Resources, and answers the question: what do I need to start an ostrich farm?

Starting an ostrich farm is an adventurous step for anybody. 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...

• breeding

• chick rearing

• chick housing

• raising birds to slaughter age

• incubation facilities

you may wish to consider other building space for your offices, farm shop or living/rest area for workers.

Also Read: Things needed to start an ostrich farm 

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. However, if you want productivity, experienced farmers tell us that colonies work best.

The advantage of a colony is that the birds have more birds to choose from, in seeking a partner. The space that you need for a breeding trio is approximately 30 metres (32 yards) by 50 metres (55 yards) – a total of 1500 square metres. Over the years I have seen this size reduced to almost half, without any serious consequences. Personally, I prefer larger parks with plenty of running space – hence the tendency to make the park oblong rather than square.

Also Read: What do you feed emus 

For chicks, they really need little space during their first four weeks of age. Let us say 2 metres (2 yards) by 10 metres (11 yards) for a group of 20 chicks, however they grow remarkably quickly.

Chicks will need increasingly large areas as they grow. At 12 months they are adult ostriches, and 50 x 12 month old ostriches will need say an area of 1000 sq. metres - 20 metres (22 yards) x 50 metres (55 yards).

In the USA, the growing space is much larger. Typically 100 chicks are grown out on 6000 to 9000 square metres. All the bird areas should have shade in some form or other. It may only be shadecloth 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.

Things Needed To Start An Ostrich Farm

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.

Also Read: Can ostriches breed in captivity 

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.

Also Read: How much food should I feed pigeon 

Record, record, record. You need to be able to answer the following questions PER PEN

• how many eggs did my breeders lay?

• how much did it cost to feed my breeders per year?

• how many chicks actually hatched?

• how many chicks reached slaughter age?

• how much does it cost to feed a chick to slaughter age?

and from these replies calculate

• how much does it cost to produce an egg?

• how much does it cost to produce a one day chick?

• how much does it cost to produce a slaughter bird at a given

weight ?

Compare the costs to your revenues

• what are sales from selling egg shells?

• from selling feathers?

• from skins?

• from meat?

By doing these calculations PER PEN, you will hopefully be able to identify those that make the most and also just as important, identify those that make the least. If a trio is not profitable, cull. Cut your losses.

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