~For The Birds~

Today I wanted to join my Sweet Sis Chari at "Happy To Design " for repost Sunday...Please be sure and go by and see all the GREAT Do overs today...This post I did in Jan 2009 Hope you enjoy!!

I thought today I would share with you my Bird farm...Yes from 1991 to 2007 I use to raise birds.... From BIG birds to little birds...see these Eggs ??? Well the Big one is an Ostrich egg, the green one is an Emu egg and in the front row is a Bob White quail egg, and of course a Chicken egg.. we also use to raise Peacocks and Guinea hens... Now I am sorry about these pictures but they are just snap shots that I had to scan..this is my sweet little Mama with a just hatched Emu chick, these are Emu chicks in the brooder box under the heat light and here is an Emu chick at a week old in its chick run...

Now this is an Ostrich male at 6 months old and the 2 birds next to him our an Emu pair at 6 months old... Ostriches can reached heights of 10 foot...where Emus will get to 8 foot..now these are still babies birds... these are just pictures of me in the pens with the birds so you can really see how big they can get.Now Ostriches come from Africa and they are the largest bird in the world...but they can not fly..thank God for that, I sure wouldn't want to clean my wind shield after they flew over... Emu's come from Australia and are the second largest bird.. Ostriches lay there eggs during the summer months and Emus during the winter months..so we were always busy with incubating eggs..and with Emus the male sits on the eggs to hatch them and the female will only lays as many eggs as what he will sit on..if she lays to many he will kick them out from under neath him...And Emus will only drop there eggs at night time...and our would lay one every 3 nights.... The female Emus will have nothing to do with her eggs she'll lay them, and get up and leave them for the male...and the Male when he is sitting will go for 56 days without food or water while he hatches them.. Now the male Ostrich will get very mean while he is in color...his neck will turn bright Red..and he really don't want anyone near him at that time...I mean come on he is servicing his women !!!

Now this is what we called our grow out pens....now every chick we had we did blood work on for DNA sexing and Microchip ed each one in the piping muscle in their necks...As when we got ready to sell them we know they were unrelated pair...we would sell week ago chicks to one year old birds... the older they were the more they costed...Yearly Ostriches were selling for $42,000. a pair.... Emus were $18,000. a pair....

Now this is a male and female Ostrich both at 3 months old...you can really see how gray and little she is to the male who is the Pretty one...he is just coming into his black and white color..the other picture is of them full grown Yearlings..
Hope you enjoyed my little bird farm today...it was really fun when we did this...but was too hard on me to keep it up after my late husband died...those 50 lbs feed sacks got to be too heavy for me...at one time we had over 300 Ostriches and Emus here...and girls I will tell you one Ostrich egg will made an omelet for 10 people...where as it takes 5 quail eggs to equal one chicken egg and yes I did use the eggs for baking...only if they were not fertile and we also sold the by product from the birds...the Ostrich's eggs we sold for $50.00 and Emus eggs for $25,00.

We also would have the Emu's bucthered ...The fat from the Emus was rendered and sold to burn clinics...nothing on those birds was a waste...And the Leather from the Ostriches was also another by-product we sold...after we send it to the tannery...


Until next time from my mountain to yours

hugs and smiles Gl♥ria