April 19, 2011

I am posting the data collected over the years.  It will take a while because there is so much of it. 1996, 1999, 2004, 2005, and 2007 have been added. 

May 29, 2011

This year's blog.  With new facilities, cicadas for food, we may see some interesting developments.

Updated 10/4/2011

How to really raise rheas and ostriches. 

This is the patent that is the basis of this diet.  Written in 1996, awarded in 1999.

Ratite Extracts as Therapeutic Agents

This is the result of 17 years of research on how to raise rhea chicks and 2 years with ostrich chicks.  This is a gift to you to help you, the breeder, raise these animals successfully.  It is time to stop the suffering of the chicks as they slowly and painfully die of fading chick syndrome or rubber rhea syndrome and your suffering and frustration as you watch your chicks die. 

From here on out if you hatch 20 chicks you should be able to metabolically raise ALL chicks that begin to eat.  Raising these birds consistently and successfully is fun.  If problems develop call me and we will try to find the source of the contamination.  There is no charge for this service.

If you would like to help, call me and we can discuss the minor diet changes I would like to try.  The race is now to refine the diets to produce the largest and strongest chicks.  Under this diet my African black chicks were 6.5 feet tall, their adult height, at 5 months.  The slaughter data will show us if the reams of scientific papers on ostrich management are virtual trash from building data on stunted chicks. 

How could I do this by myself?  Lots and lots of adversity gave me so many opportunities to find the nuggets of truth.  If I had not been able to transform adversity into discovery I would have quit many years ago.  I have the fortune and misfortune of living in a very contaminated environment.  My neighbors burn garbage indiscriminately, producing toxic fumes, and the farms all use toxic pesticides and herbicides.  By linking the stunting and deformities in the birds to the environmental contamination I had many opportunities to try different methods and remedies on the chicks.

The second factor is what I call reading the whitespace.  On any page there are the words, which is generally all we see.  But the words actually take up a miniscule amount of real estate on the page.  The black letters represent the standard known paradigm, the whitespace is the place of creativity, discovery, and genius.  My comfort zone is in the whitespace.

Rhea and Ostrich Pediatrics:

Preventing Fading Chick Syndrome and Rubber Rhea Syndrome

Fading chick syndrome and rubber rhea syndrome are diseases of human intervention.  There is no evidence that they exist in wild populations. 

These chicks are like little Ferraris, they grow with astounding speed and efficiency if fed and housed properly.  If the slightest thing is out of tune they sputter and die.  In the wild they eat plants and insects as chicks.  I cannot even begin to explain how this morphed into corn, soy, and alfalfa.

Biosecurity

Discard all current notions of biosecurity along with the disinfectants.  These methods KILL. (link to data) 

In the halcyon days of the breeders market many people were vying for the podium.  When I look back at what was simply extrapolated from confinement livestock operations and sold as the way to keep chicks healthy, it stuns me.  People were making this stuff up with no thought that they could be doing harm. I haven't found bacteria to be a problem at all if the chicks are fed right.  However, all the chemicals used to disinfect are surefire immune system killers.  Cleanliness is important for keeping noxious odors down, but sterility is not.

Soy is toxic to the chicks

I recall listening to that original protein research on ostrich in 1993, at the American Ostrich Association convention, that showed that higher levels of protein were detrimental and thinking something was wrong with the study.  I don't remember who 'they' are, but 'they' overran the data, which is very common.  The assumption was that all protein is the same, which it is not, especially if it's from a soybean.  This was not recognized then.  By 1999 I had exhausted all soy possibilities, including cold-pressed, so we moved on to non-soy protein sources.  Our ratite nutritionists made a terrible assumption (the first of many) and the chicks died.  To date, I have not found that there can be too much protein in the diet, the rhea chicks keep the barn free of flies with bills snapping shut over flies all day.

The data shows the improvement when soy was removed from the diet. (link to data)

Animal Protein

The infants require animal protein.  Contrary to what the ostrich industry holds as truth, ostriches are omnivores as infants.  I have a videotape of 4 day old ostriches ravenously attacking a tray of cabbage worms, a caterpillar that is supposed to be unpalatable to birds.  The sources that I use are cooked ratite egg  and cooked, pureed beef hearts (they are cheap).

Carbohydrates

Another HUGE mistake by ratite nutritionists.  Grain is deadly to baby rheas.  Potato, carrots, and legumes are not.  I suspect the same is true with ostriches but mine were not fed grain until 3 months, and even then it minimal.

Brassicas-Cabbage Family- A critical component

We had a horrible drought in 2007. The wheat and alfalfa sprout system, capable of producing 20 pounds or so of sprouts daily, would use too much water when well water was scarce.  We had to find another way.  In the first few weeks I was cutting horseweed, lamb's quarter and raiding the garden for kale and cabbage.  But, as the weeks wore on and more and more chicks were eating, that became wearisome and the weeds weren't growing anymore, anyway.  So, I started buying cabbages and collards from the farmers market.  They loved it and thrived.  There is some kind of switch that has to turn on for them to gain weight.  Brassicas have the compound that turns on the switch.

     Cabbage Frenzy

 Dried alfalfa meal and baled alfalfa

This is the basis of the diets (see below- #1), combined with a meat slurry. Baled alfalfa flakes are fed ad lib.

Vitamins

Do I give vitamins to the chicks?   No, I haven't found them to have any effect and they may be detrimental.  I use 2 TB of kelp per gallon of mixed food to provide micronutrients.

1.  Diets 
This page is being rewritten-the link doesn't work.

    1.a Data

            1996 rhea weight gain chart

            1999 rhea weight gain chart

            2001 rhea weight gain chart

            2004 rhea weight gain chart

  2005 rhea weight gain chart

  2006 rhea weight gain chart -sprouts, meat, egg

  2007 rhea weight gain chart       

            2008 rhea weight gain chart

            2008 ostrich weight gain

2010 data-email me, I want to know who you are

2. Fading Chick Syndrome causes and remediation

    2.a Data

3. Downer Chicks-causes and remediation

These must be caught early for this to be effective.  Excess Vitamin D in the feed (a mistake in formulation) produced a rash of downed chicks.

Downed birds and leg rotations have a quick, easy fix.  As birds graduated from the barn to full time outdoors I was seeing downed birds or early stages of leg rotations.  I finally realized it was too much sun from animals that had never seen sunshine.  As simple management change prevented the problem in subsequent groups.   

1 200 mg SAM-e (liver detoxifier and sulfur compound) to downed birds and early stage leg rotations can mitigate the conditions.

4. Leg Rotations-cause and prevention

5. Ostrich Slaughter Data-This is not as good as it can be for the reasons listed.

Hatched 6/24.  At two months of age they were exposed to 15 hours of horrible burning leaves in stagnant air that killed 2 of 4 ostriches and all rheas under 2  months of age (gotta love the neighbors).  Processed April 13.  Two males, each yielding 75 pounds of meat. A week less than 10 months old.

Hatched 8/19, Slow to eat, pecked by the parents, underweight, and featherless when I picked them up on 9/18.  Processed April 13, two males, each yielding 60 pounds of meat. 8 months old.

Public links. 

To ensure sure this information remains in the public domain for posterity I have also posted on this site:

http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/Ratite_Husbandry/messages