Is This Bird a TURKEY?

By MICHAEL RILEY ATLANTA

Pssst! Want to get rich quick? Stop buying gold bullion. Forget the stock market. Bag the racehorses. Just get your head out of the sand and buy some ostriches.

That's right, ostriches. Lured by the promise of doubling or even tripling their investment, Americans from Maine to California are flocking to buy the big birds, convinced that they're on to the hottest thing since the chinchilla craze of the 1950s. Suzanne Shingler, part owner of Fowler Farms near Albany, Ga., has discovered the magic of ostrich farming, and the gaze she directs at the large ivory-colored egg in her hands has all the gleam of a gold-rush prospector's. "In a few months," chirps Shingler, "this precious baby will be worth $6,000." It will take $20,000 this year alone for her to care for 20 ostriches and their offspring, but the farm stands to rake in between $300,000 and $500,000 selling the chicks to other investors.

Such success stories have created a white-hot market for ostriches, with some investors plopping down $100,000 or more to start farms. Today nearly 20,000 ostriches grace about 2,000 U.S. farms, up from a handful of farms a decade ago. Imports of live chicks have soared 500% in the past five years. Little wonder. A fertilized ostrich egg fetches $1,500, and a pair of breeding adults goes for around $40,000. With female ostriches laying upwards of 80 eggs a year, it takes just basic math to calculate astronomical returns.

Construction magnate Daisuke Mizutani in 1989 bought half the Bordelon Breeders farm in Texas, one of the largest in the U.S., and Louisiana's Pacesetter Ostrich Farm will be the first to go public this month. Even cautious bureaucrats are falling in love with this ungainly bird. The Texas department of agriculture, which recently hired a full-time ostrich expert, has already made more than $1.2 million in low-interest loans to farmers in the booming industry, and projects that ostrich farming will pump nearly 5,000 jobs and $170 million into the state's economy by the year 2000. Georgia's legislature plans to consider a $150,000 grant to the University of Georgia to find ways to increase the hatching rate (now 30%) and reduce chick mortality. "It's beyond the fad stage," claims Kenny Page, avian-medicine professor at the university. "It is where the chicken industry was 30 years ago."

Unlike its avian peers, the ostrich spawns a variety of luxury products. Start with the meat, which aficionados liken in taste to beef tenderloin. At about $20 per lb., there's a wealth of cuts to be had from the average 400-lb. bird. Ostrich meat is healthful as well: half the calories of beef, one- seventh the fat and considerably less cholesterol, and it even bests chicken and turkey in those categories. Huntington's, a posh eatery in Dallas' Galleria, serves, among other ostrich specialties, a blackened fillet, an ostrich tortilla pizza and a hibiscus-smoked ostrich salad. "Our customers thought we were kidding at first. Ostrich?" says restaurant manager Monika Cundiff. "But then they became fascinated by it." One out of four diners orders the lean meat. Even if ostriches don't become haute cuisine, investors are hoping the big birds achieve greater fame than a spot on Sesame Street. Ostrich eyelashes are used as paintbrush bristles, feathers for dusting and hats and coats, and the thick, tough hide is prized for everything from cowboy boots to sofas.

Despite all these potential products, ostrich farming, for the time being, still smells a little bit more like an investment scam than the producer of a legitimate cash crop. "In my opinion, it's a pyramid scheme," warns scientist Gary Davis of North Carolina State University in Raleigh. Ostriches remain largely the obsession of a rarefied breeders' market, where demand far outstrips supply and pushes prices through the barn roof. All the chicks hatched in the U.S. this year have been sold to investors hoping to cash in on the craze, but the good times are unlikely to last. As the number of ostriches soars, the high-flying prices will drop, unless a huge market for food and other products opens up. But that has yet to happen. Furthermore, observes Texas rancher Randy Reaves, who since 1988 has traded in most of his cattle for the more lucrative big birds, "people don't understand that they can't throw some of these birds in their backyard and expect to make $1 million and drive a Rolls-Royce. It's not that simple." If future investors choose to stick their heads in the sand, the ostrich may become an apt metaphor.

With reporting by Allan Holmes/Albany and Richard Woodbury/Dallas