University Daily Kansan / Friday, May 1, 1992
5B
Ostrich ranchers harvest bucks from big eggs
About five years ago, Gene and Dorothy Mohr's son Greg was working on a cattle ranch in Texas that also produced oil.
Because of the decline in the oil industry, the ranch went bankrupt and Greg found himself headed to another job, at an exotic animal farm that happened to be one of the top ostrich ranches in the country.
bother of the top boss in the company.
When Greg returned to his parents' farm in Ottawa,
he brought home two ostrich eggs and an idea for a
business.
Greg built a little hatchery made of chicken wire for the chicks, but they needed better shelter than the hatchery could provide. The chicks did not live, but the seed of interest in the animals had been planted. The Mohrs decided to start the Rock Creek Ostrich Ranch off Highway 59 in Ottawa.
Three months after Greg returned to Ottawa with the chicks, the Mohrs bought three more eggs. Of those three original eggs, one male and one female are still on the farm and are now a breeding pair named Partner and Daisy.
Across the country, there are more than 600 exotic animal farms, and Rock Creek is one of only 40 ostrich farms in Kansas.
With about 30 ostriches and five pairs who mate, the ranch can produce hundreds of healthy chicks each year. The Mohrs begin selling pairs of chicks at four months of age for $6,000. With each month that the chicks are buyers are charged another $1,000.
Ostrich hens typically lay an egg every other day, usually about the same time of day. Once the eggs are laid, Dorothy collects and weighs the eggs and marks its parental identification on the shell. On the average, an ostrich egg can weigh between four and five pounds.
Because they want to care for all the chicks at the same time, the eggs are placed in a refrigerator set at 60 degrees so the embryos are unable to develop. The eggs must be kept in an incubator to begin the development procedure.
one only chick to survive the last hatching has been placed in a brooder to keep it warm until it is strong enough to survive outside of a temperature-controlled environment. Chicks tend to be strong enough by their fourth or fifth day and are moved to an indoor brooder room, which has several pen areas that hold as many as 100 chicks at once. The chicks stay in the brooder room for three weeks.
About two months later, an ostrich is ready to be moved outdoors. Although the climate in Kansas would not appear conducive to the health of the exotic bird, Dorothy Mohr said that the birds had adapted and that every precaution was taken for their security.
Although the two-month-old birds are placed in a common pen with other birds, they are not ready to be mated.
In most of the mating pairs, alfalfa grows wild so they eat the grass along with their normal ostrich feed. The only time the weather poses a real threat to the ostriches is in the winter when snow and ice cover the ground. If the birds are not watched carefully, they can slip, fall, break a limb and have to be put to sleep.
Five pairs of ostriches are being mated at Rock Creek although only four are laying eggs. Last year, the ranch successfully hatched and bred about 40 chicks to sell. This year they expect to triple the number.
An ostrich ranch in Kansas may seem like an implausible business, but the Mohrs are doing quite well. Rock Creek is a partnership between Greg and his parents that successfully supports their two families.
Story and photos by Peggy Woods
Dorothy weighs an egg and marks the shell with its parents' identification before placing the egg in a refrigerator.
Dorothy Mohr shares several daily visits with the ostriches in the common pen area on her family's Rock Creek Ostrich Ranch off Highway 59 in Ottawa.