Journal 2011

May 29, 2011

We have the black flies, aka carnivorous buffalo gnats, but we have only had 1 mortality of a small yearling.

This is in sharp contrast to previous years where all, or nearly all, of the yearlings died from the attacking gnats.  Last year I observed that the two almost full grown, 8 month old ostriches died within a few hours (3-5) of the appearance of the gnats.  The yearling rheas died soon after, but in order of their age.  The youngest birds we had were the ostriches.

So, last year, I hypothesized the juveniles could not handle the toxemia from the gnats bites.  In humans, the gnats cause a nasty welt when they bite-evidence of an injected poison.  To mitigate the problem I had to accelerate the growth rate.  Allowing that I am human with a normal lazy streak, I take the chicks off the homemade food ASAP and put them on commercial foal food.  It is Ok, but their growth does slow.   To complicate the issue, the chicks that were hatched from gnat-time eggs were difficult to raise.  The increased levels of stress hormones retarded the growth in the chicks.  They were difficult to pull through and accelerate the growth, but it ultimately worked.   Last year I kept making the food until they were 5 months old. 
The chicks were immense as we went into winter and when spring came, the yearlings were sexually mature.  I had no pullet eggs (tiny) and will have to pull small eggs and medium eggs off the craft egg page.  The yearlings are laying full size eggs at 10 months old.  When I started rhea maturity was 1-2 years.

This year we were fortunate to have a very cool spring and delayed gnat appearance, so we have a multitude of eggs. Plus we have cicadas this week.  As they emerge there is a period where they pump their wings and mature, nestled in the grass or on bushes.  So, these chicks are being fed insect protein, their natural diet.  I expect these weight charts to be superb.  At 12 days old and younger they are being fed brassicas, weeds, strawberry tops, cicadas, rhea egg, and their regular diet.

June 7, 2011

New wrinkle.  The gnats are still here and the 65 chicks are barn-bound in an 8 x 16 area.  They need to be outside running around.  I only got 2 days of cicadas as they headed into the trees and then the chicks went on a cicada food strike when the bug dinners stopped. With the current heat wave this gnat invasion should be coming to an end as they require cool temperatures to breed.  I am spraying the dense undergrowth to try to control their numbers. 

We weighed the chicks today.  The oldest will be 2 weeks old tomorrow and we are beginning to see weight gain and growth.  A few are thin, but all bills are rock hard, so I think this is just a residual from refusing to eat their feed in anticipation of more cicadas + no time outside grazing.

The 4 new pens are being constructed in a 2 x 2 arrangement with a 50' square working pen in the center.  We will be able to feed from this pen and move the birds from pen to pen.  The outer fence is trenched 18" in the ground and is 5' tall with a hot wire at the 4' level.  We have learned the hard way a cheap fence is the most expensive fence one can construct.

9/28

No entries since the beginning of summer.  It was a spectacular chick year all right, spectacularly awful.  Anything that could go awry did-in a big way.  Before I go into the gory details, we are throwing very big money at the problems.   Currently under construction is a state of the art ratite production facility on 10 acres.  The fences are 5 foot high non-climbing top with a hot wire and extend underground 18" to prevent canines from digging or climbing their way in.  The 4000 square foot Clearspan house will be for raising chicks and providing shelter during the winter and gnat season (more on that later).  To provide more control of their food we are installing a Farmtek fodder system, (video) which is akin to building a swing set on Christmas Eve.  It is 9 feet tall and can provide fresh greens for 6000-7000 pounds of animals.  Next year we will much more in control of their environment.

It has been at least 6 years since we have had birds to process.  I have had to deal with endless coyote and dog attacks so I bought 2 Great Pyrenees livestock guard dogs 4 years ago.  Four months later one of them went stupid and killed 28 of the 32 yearlings in a fun-filled night for the dog.  She was replaced with a competent female who is doing a good job.

Feeling smug and confident that now the birds were protected from predators, a predator I had never encountered appeared.  Carnivorous Buffalo gnats or Black Flies emerge in spring when the water temperature is still cool and hang around until it warms up. They showed up after the severe drought, suggesting their natural water-dependent predator had its numbers greatly reduced.  For the past 3 years we have had very cool springs, with no heat wave appearing until summer.  I suspect the common March-early April week of 85-90 prevented the cool-water dependent larva from maturing in great enough numbers to do harm and make all animals’ lives (including people) miserable for the 6-10 weeks they are here. These nasty swarms can kill in hours, wiping out juvenile ratites, specifically any bird not sexual mature. 

Online sources say the insects block the air passages, but I disagree.  Since the younger they are the quicker they succumb, I believe it is the toxins in their bites that kill the birds.  On humans they leave large welts.  The most glaring example was when I lost two 9 month old ostriches within 3 hours of the gnats arrival.  These birds were 125 and 140 pounds but the youngest birds on the farm.  The yearling rheas succumbed the next day. Of 30 yearlings, 28 died.  This repeated the following year.  Last year, I decided to accelerate their growth so the yearlings would be sexually mature by the time the gnats hit.  It worked.  Only one small yearling died.  A small victory, because there were only 21 chicks going into the fall.  My neighbor’s dog got into the chick barn and killed 18 chicks while I was shopping. 

I presently have only 31 breeders which is not enough to process birds into the ATP BOOST supplement and maintain adequate breeder numbers.  Another year without product.  I cannot even buy my way out of this no-supply problem.  Rheas are scarce and we have the funds to pay for the birds. 

So, I came into this year with high expectations.  My only thought is that it is not my time to be successful yet.  I started this in 1993 and eighteen chick seasons later I am 60 years old.  Even though I have solved fading chick syndrome and rubber rhea syndrome, designed a no-grain, no-soy diet that can produce a mature rhea in 10-12 months, bred the nastiness out of the breeder male rheas, discovered the incredible therapeutic properties of the meat, defined the ATP pathway, discovered the autoimmune disorder pathway, and brought evolutionary medicine to a whole new level with biochemistry, was awarded two patents (one in oil biochemistry and one in protein biochemistry), I remain isolated.  Totally isolated.  Vacuum type of isolated.  Academic solitary confinement.

To put this into context, I make Jane Goodall look like a slouch.  No one bounces around the different bio-scientific disciplines as successfully as I have.  I could handle the years of ridicule (without review), insults, slander, libel, and being dismissed as insane if I had the supply to manufacture the supplements my customers depended on for their well-being.   

9/29

So, what happened?  From the beginning the birds were not growing well. Initially, I had no clue what was going on.  The diet was tested for 2 years with wonderful results.

Problem #1:  A month into the season I watched the farm hand mix the food; the alfalfa meal was lumpy, possibly indicative of mold.  I checked the bag and the back was indeed moldy.  There was the problem-moldy food, known cause of death in young animals. 

#2 When the chicks don't like their food or it makes them feel bad they will go out of there way to eat inappropriate things, like sticks.  The pine shavings had an inordinate amount of sticks, so combined with nasty tasting moldy food, they proceeded to eat sticks and kill themselves.

#3  Since the pine shavings were such a problem I substituted chopped corn cobs, advertised as highly absorbent.  They forgot to mention they support mold growth.  So, we're trying to reverse compromised chicks in a moldy environment.  That can't work.

#4 Heat.  Relentless heat.  Animals cut back on food intake in high heat.  Even with fans it was hard to reverse the first 3 problems without good appetites.  They wouldn't eat anything in the midday heat.  This went on for about 6 weeks.  Given what was happening, it was a miracle or proof of the efficacy of the diet.

#5.  This one was especially awful.  We had a bad storm that took out the electricity for a few hours, a never before occurrence here.  We switched over to the generator, but the generator is sized for winter power usage, not summer.  We have 4 freezers and all the incubators adding to the load, too much for the generator.  We turned off the freezers.  The next night we had another blackout.  We decided to use a large, used incubator I had just installed.  It used far less power than the smaller ones.  I had run it for 2 months and it did a wonderful, steady job.  So, to conserve energy, we emptied the smaller incubators into the larger one.  All 86 eggs were viable; 20 were due to hatch within 10 days. 

On the way back to the house I slipped in the wet grass and pulled a muscle in my leg.  For the next 3 days I walked as little as possible to facilitate healing.  That included choosing NOT to climb the long set of steep steps up to the incubator room.  Three days later when I went up to check on the eggs they were too hot to hold.  The incubator thermostat had failed and the eggs were cooked.

#6.  I always quit setting eggs mid-July because the late hatch chicks did not do well in the mid 1990's.  I have not raised late chicks since then.  Now, I was faced with the worst case scenario of setting and hatching late chicks.  Another 40 chicks hatched late August.  Most of them died from stick or grass impaction.  No rain, poor grazing.  Tough grass is inappropriate chick food.

#7.  Here it is early October.  Now, because these chicks are so small they are susceptible to predation by owls and raccoons.  Even with the roaming Great Pyrenees, the raccoons can take to the trees and get into the pen. 

10/3

So, why is it I cannot raise chicks now that I know what I am doing?  The answer lies in the energy of the area.  In the 1700's a French Jesuit priest traveling with Lewis and Clark was so disturbed by the area the local navigable waterway was named Mauvisterre, French for bad earth or badlands. 

One of the curious and disturbing things about the town is childhood mortality.  Both my husband and I went to big city schools with high school populations of over 3500 students.  We never experienced the death of a classmate.  Contrast those numbers with the 1% of my son's class who did not live to graduate represented by 3 empty chairs at graduation.  This happened every year.  We are transplants to the area and started to ask people if they thought this was normal.  They did.  It was their reality that a certain number of children in this town of 19,000 would die every year, most in violent accidents-not one to gang or criminal activities.

When a local judge's 12 year old son was killed I was unnerved by the frequency.  Not knowing the tale of the Jesuit priest, the night before the funeral I meditated on the problem and could feel this evil "thing" and recognized it needed deaths and grief to persist.  I left that meditation and started walking towards the bedroom to retire.  The bedroom door seemed jammed.  It would open an inch and then shut again.  I thought I was loosing my footing, so on the third try I braced myself against furniture and pushed hard. The door swung open, I was picked up by something and thrown against the door with a loud slam.  I screamed.  I could not move off the door.  I was literally smashed against the door, being held against my will by an invisible force.  My husband turned on the light.  I told him I needed help because I couldn't move.  When he reached for me he could feel a rush of cold air pass between us.  I had met the evil that haunts this town.  Note to self: Do not attract spirits unless well prepared for the outcome.

The childhood deaths stopped a few years back.  I didn't take notice, but I do notice I can't keep enough birds alive to produce the product that changed so many people's live.  It is part of the landscape and all I can do is continue to raise the vibrational energy of the property.  What I cannot do is remove the negativity of the years of libel, slander, and ridicule. And one of the planet's most important animals continues on in obscurity.

With the drought in Texas forcing farmers to sell of their herds of cattle, we are heading for a meat shortage.  It takes about 2.5 years from conception to the dinner plate for cattle.  Ratites by comparison, take 13-15 months from conception to processing.  With their high rate of reproduction, we should expect the offspring of 1 hen to be 15 times her body weight-15 chicks, minimum.  The efficiency of the rhea and ostrich are astonishing.

Just for fun, here is an application for funding from a USDA Rural Development grant that was denied because I wasn't qualified.  Fifteen years later I did as much as I could given the isolation and primitive facilities.

The critical, but ignored flowcharts from patent # 5,989,594 defining the ATP Pathway as the Flow of Work in metabolism based in evolutionary medicine at the biochemical level.

1. Flow of Work: ATP

2. ATP Utilization and Degradation

3. How Toxins Deplete the Body of ATP

4. A layman's explanation of the above

10/4

So, who is responsible for leading the ratites headlong into oblivion? 

First and foremost would be the functionally insane organization, the American Ostrich Association.  It started out as an elitist organization populated by a bunch of crazy, greedy bullies unwilling to compromise or work with the other ratite groups to achieve a common goal.  Fifteen years after the crash they still are protecting their elitism.  The USDA told all of us we had to work together.

It is their way or the highway.  This is a copy of a forum discussion I started on their site.  Talk about misinformation!  As soon as someone figures out it is me they will kick me off the forum.   I became public enemy #1 in 1994 for warning that the ratites had no market and we were heading into a disaster.  When it happened I was brutally blamed for killing the breeders' market.  Talk about kill the messenger!

Here is a perfect example of their delusions.  In 1999 one of my Texas customers needed to find meat without hormones or antibiotics.  Ostrich meat was the perfect solution.  I stupidly called the AOA asking who could supply meat in my customers' area.  The man was polite and friendly and invited me to rejoin the organization.  They were a kinder, gentler AOA he said.  He couldn't help me, but told me to call someone in Conroe, Tx.  I did.  Her husband answered the phone and we had a pleasant discussion.  His wife was out of town, at the AOA headquarters and he suggested I email her there.  This is what transpired:

The response to my benign email request for a source of ostrich meat in the Houston area for one of my customers.  I had talked to her husband the previous day and he was very pleasant.

 -----Original Message-----

Donna,

Please do not send any more messages to my address.  I am an ostrich producer. Not ratite—OSTRICH.  You know, the bird that has “real” products.  I am not and have never been interested in emus or rheas, or their so called products.   I made that choice over 10 years ago.  There are scientific studies that have shown that ostriches are one family, the Struthioniformes, with only one living species.  The ONLY thing the birds have in common is the fact they cannot fly, thus called ratites.  You and others who author the junk you send to me have promoted your animals by lying and referring to them as “Australian ostriches”, “the little ostrich” or “the South American ostrich”.  We are tired of you jumping on and riding our backs and confusing the public.  Ostrich producers have spend far too much time trying to undo the damage.  Just do your thing—and good luck to you, but please do not integrate the birds.  They are not related and are definitely not the same. 

Carol

Dear Carol,

 In good faith I tried to share with you an alternate path to the dead end one you are now pursuing.  I was invited to an AOA meeting two weeks ago by a man who has found significant relief from his arthritis pain by the OSTRICH TENDON extract.  I have also attached the most recent report on OSTRICH muscle extract.  After I solved the puzzle of Fading Chick Syndrome I predicted that the struthios and rhea would be capable of doing this in animals and humans respectively, and unlike emu oil, I know how and why. 

 I also discovered how bankrupt the AOA is and how destitute are its members.  Elitism is misplaced in this situation, but nothing I do or say can convince you of this.  This is the same nonsense that Tom Mantzel was spouting several years ago.  According to Tom Wielbrenner(sp?), this same Tom is dumping foreign hides on the US market diluting the value of your hides.  I can’t understand why you have chosen to deify him.

 As far as the AOA spending far too much time and money on something as silly as nomenclature found in any encyclopedia, that explains why people like me lost hundreds of thousands of dollars as members of your organization and your membership is, shall I say, depressed.

 I am not trying to integrate the birds.  Trust me when I say there was no one more horrified than I was when I realized that Fading Chick Syndrome in struthios was just a variation of Rubber Rhea Syndrome in rheas, both of which can be easily prevented and reversed with attention to toxins.  When the classification for the birds was made they didn’t understand the unique physiology of the struthios and rhea.  They are very, very much the same as my science will prove out.  I don’t like it either, especially since I knew that solving the mortality problem of the rhea would give it an edge over the struthios. 

 I would never want the public to confuse a rhea with a struthios.  The struthios is only a meat bird, the rhea has much wider medical applications.  Given your current market crisis, if you have been spending that much time playing Don Quixote and defending yourself against imaginary issues, then this economic crisis is of your own design.

 In a year or two your membership will be horrified that you chased me away.  We are in a time of world-wide meat protein excess and high competition for the low-fat market.  I don’t sell meat and never will.  As far as my request for help to meet the dietary needs of the clinical trial autoimmune patients at UT, I sent them to the tilapia growers-fish.

 Tell Frank Wallace that there is no way I am interested in joining the AOA.  I tested the water and it still smells like a sewer.

 Donna Fezler

 So, what happened in the course of a few hours?  My best guess is at the time AOA President Amy Raines, DVM was instrumental in this response.  She and Carol were at the AOA office at the same time that day.  Plus, and this is where the ethics line is crossed, Amy has taken credit for solving Fading Chick Syndrome and used it to catapult herself into a very fancy job at the new vet school in California.  If I was right, she was wrong, and she couldn't have that.  She is wrong, extremely wrong.  Here is the question she didn't ask (over ran her data): Adenovirus may produce symptoms like Fading Chick Syndrome, but do all cases of Fading Chick Syndrome have Adenovirus?  What- NO DATA?  Why am I not surprised?  Discrediting me goes a long way to crystallizing her importance.  Someone needs to poke around her story, it won't hold up.

The only thing that makes sense here is the background/reference check was very poor.  She was officially reprimanded and fined for malpractice, negligence, and misdiagnosis .  The procedure is as basic as washing a wound, yet it was not done, in spite of the horse's discomfort.  More on page 25 of this PDF.

Plus, as President of the AOA she had no ostriches.  I know because I went past her mess of a farm when I was in Oklahoma City for a funeral.  The pens were empty and overgrown.  Somehow she parlayed a whole lot of non-achievement into an executive position.  I suspect there is one really creative resume out there.

Then there is her Better Breeders' Program.  For a pricey fee she would evaluate your farm and award you the "coveted" Better Breeder designation.  The minimum requirement was 70% survivability from egg to adult.  This is hilarious.  70% of my eggs hatch.  I barely qualify already.  In my opinion, based on 18 years of experience, the only way to get awarded the prize was to outright LIE.  Show me the data, Amy.  I will not be shocked when there is none.  But wait, although I was constantly accused of lying, the AOA seems to have cornered the market on lying.  Functionally insane organization.

The World Ostrich Association did a program a few years on ostrich farming in Hungary.  Same old, same old.  Sounds like the AOA offerings many years ago.  "Ostrich Farming in Kentucky", Ostrich Farming in Wisconsin"  The locations are getting more exotic.  I can hardly wait until we get 'Ostrich Farming in Antarctica".  More useless information from useless organizations.

I solve the problems.  Other people and organizations perpetuate them.

10/14

More on the rogue's gallery.  Tonight my focus is on Darryl Holle, owner of Blue Mountain Feeds, and current and past president of the World Ostrich Association (an offshoot of the American Ostrich Association suffering from all the same failings).  He has an impressive website focusing on his hypothesis that animal protein is BAD for ratites.  Only problem here is that he has never challenged the hypothesis.  Loves his soy, he does.  No data on that hypothesis, either.  And then there is the password protected challenges to other people's research. I requested a password and never got a response.  Perhaps what is hidden there is a direct assault on my patents.  Show me your data, Darryl.  The website on the value of soy with no data.  Science by decree isn't science.

Here is his research page.   Please notice the PDF links to ostrich research review.  It is password protected.  Good luck.  His resume.

So, I decided to challenge the obligate vegetarian hypothesis.  Here is a video of my well-fed ostrich chicks relishing cabbage worm caterpillars and sow bugs.    

10/19  Absolutely love the fodder system.  The chicks were wary at first but now they come running, leaving in disappointment when I don't have the veggies.  After two weeks of experimentation we have settled on winter wheat and purple top field turnips (normally sown as deer food). Lentils work well; bird seed millet is slow.  Sunflower seeds and beans make a huge mess.

10/29

The fodder system is still being redesigned.  I love what it produces, but not the design.  It was never tested in production and it shows.  We have added angle aluminum to the corners because consulting engineer husband says the welds WILL break under all that weight and kill someone.  I have added a Powercare filter from the pressure washer section at Home Depot, vari-flow valves to turn off the water at each little (168 of them) hose so water doesn't drip all everywhere during tray changes, a drain valve to the tank, a Y hose fitting to easily drain the tank and covered the drainage holes of each tray with removable pieces of fiberglass screening.  I will probably make a you tube video of the changes.

If we weren't pouring so much money into this I would quit.  I just lost 2 birds, 3 days apart, to a rare condition known as a prolapsed cloaca.  No, I didn't do necropsies, I am tired and disgusted.  Because of the isolation I have no access to lab work, so I am in the dark on their metabolic state.  I am blaming it on the heat mat I put in their hut.  Since some of them are so stunted I didn't think they could survive the winter with just heat lamps.  I have never done this before and won't do it again.  Down to 18 birds, with only 3 of them any where near the size they should be.

10/31/2011     Happy Halloween! While we are on the subject of ghouls, let's look at my list of bad guys.  It includes universities, companies, and organizations.  All "spelled" to believe or espouse non-truths or crappy science ----no-nonsense.  Nonsense and nonscience are pretty darn close.  The next on the list is the Association of Avian Veterinarians.  I don't remember the details but I remember seeing their abstracts for the convention and being horrified, ABSOLUTELY HORRIFIED by the idiocy that was passing off as science by the ratite veterinarians and PHD nutritionist Rosalina Angel.  I faxed them.  I called them about the lack of substance.  The executive director yelled at me that I was on a vendetta.  I gave up.  Yes, I was on vendetta for truth and they didn't want to hear it.  So, I want to know which veterinarian told them that I was not to be believed and they believed it.  NO ONE EVER CHALLENGED THESE NUTCASES and THAT THEIR WORD WAS LAW. 

The birds suffered and died because these people couldn't deal with the truth of their arrogance.  The industry failed, people lost fortunes and so many of us faced or experienced bankruptcy because of the veterinary arrogance. 

Coming up- Texas A & M university and the stellar bastion of corruption- the University of Illinois.

A fodder system is an oxygen bar. 

 November 5, 2011

Texas had the largest ratite population of any state.  Texas A & M had an active ratite program in the mid-nineties. They necropsied thousands of dead ostriches and rheas.  Since I did several hundred myself, I know there were no more than a half a dozen variations on the central theme of Fading Chick Syndrome.  One would expect, that after thousands of dead birds they would have some CLUE what was going on.  NO, none.  At a meeting with the Texas rhea producers when people were looking for any idea why we couldn’t keep these babies alive, all the pathologist said is that they didn’t know.  I know of one Texas farm that spent $50,000 on necropsies in one summer trying to raise these chicks.  Obviously, they had no expertise with the rheas.  Did that stop them from pronouncing themselves experts?  No. 

 So, in 1995 or 1996 (I think) they held a two-day ratite conference with speakers from the AOA, AEA (emu) and various veterinarians.  Then AOA president spoke on the global possibilities of the ostrich.  The rhea group was represented by Texas A& M veterinarian Jim Jenson who spoke on the ONLY viable model for raising rheas was the wild model.  He used a very large Texas ranch that has wild rheas as the example.  We had no person on that podium that owned rheas or was a member of the organization.  I was appalled, and, as chairman of research, wrote a long letter explaining where we were in our progress and offering to provide a representative speaker from the national association.  At this point we had developed the slaughter protocol and I had successfully reversed the syndrome with adipose injections IP (in the gut) in a few severely stunted survivors.  The letter was read and approved by my fellow board members.  We didn’t even get a phone call or any kind of reply, which is still true to form for the veterinarians I tried to contact. 

So, not only did the rhea breeders pay for enough worthless necropsies to more than cover the costs of my research, they got nothing in return AND got kicked in the teeth from the podium.  This happened often.

Another character worth mentioning is ostrich veterinarian James Stewart of California who was part of the American Ostrich Association's vile war to discredit, steal, slander, and libel the rhea and emu species.  The ostrich vets associated with the AOA were so unprofessional and unethical in their behavior they should all be taken to task.    It was so bad that the ratite chapter in the large text Avian Medicine opens with James Stewart (AOA) stating that any similarity between the rhea and ostrich is superficial.  Bullshit, not science.  He was one of the first vets who would negatively impact my life.  Speaking at a luncheon at the Association of Avian Veterinarians, as a ratite expert (but only invested in ostriches) he told the audience that rheas were worthless.  They went home and told their clients what the “expert” said, and as chairman of research for the North American Rhea Association, I was inundated with calls from angry rhea owners.  I demanded a retraction and his response was that he could say anything he wanted.

Because of their positions, they could slander me without any recourse on my part (I didn’t know exactly what they said-just saw the outcome) and the effect reverberated throughout the entire ratite industry.  Ridicule without review should be against the law.  These people took my life and my good name and the lives of thousands of baby birds; things they had no right to take.

Speaking of Avian Medicine by Harrison & Richey, I have "Xed" out page after page of the ratite chapter because it is so wrong.

Nov. 10, 2011

  When I was teaching myself biochemistry I turned lots of words into flowcharts to make it more comprehensible.  Where the books have one page diagrams of individual processes, I took these individual diagrams and put them on door sized or wall sized pieces of butcher paper and added appropriate references.  I had a lot of them.  This hand drawn chart from 1995-1996 is the culmination of several door sized flowcharts reduced to one 11 x 17" page.  It was too large to put on one 8 1/2 x 11" typed page so I separated it into 3 pages for the patent.  I was just trying to make some sense out of ATP.  It was everywhere but no one really talked about where it started, what happened along the way, and where it ended.  This was the map to end my confusion and tie everything together. 

In between filing the provisional patent and the final patent and a few months after I started selling Rhea Extract (it would evolve into ATP Boost a few year's later) I became VERY thrilled and VERY alarmed at the responses I was getting from people with all manner of autoimmune disorders.  There had to be a reason I was getting magical results.  So, I went back to my notes.  In a stunning AHA!!! moment I saw the crucial box in the bottom right hand corner.  I knew at that moment what I had done.   At that point I knew it was the pathway to autoimmune disorders and extremely important, but it was not the big picture. 

That would come in a dream later.  A glucose IV drip going into a car's carburetor was the image.  Now, to most people that doesn't mean anything, but to my former drag racing self (that is a euphemism for blowing up engines, clutches, and transmissions) that was all I needed to see the big picture. Glucose is fuel and was being poured into the fuel system of the car.  Glycolysis and gluconeogenesis were not the big Kahunas that biochemistry has made them out to be.  Horsepower is measured in the drive train, the path from the pistons through the transmission to the wheels, not the fuel system. 

Somehow, all these people that had college physics couldn't apply it.  Me, with one semester of high school physics, 9 college credits of auto mechanics, and years tinkering with engines, had usefully absorbed the basic principles of physics and could apply them in abstract situations. Medicine and biochemistry had made one whopper of a mistake.

The big Kahuna is the ATP Pathway, the flow of work.  This hand drawn chart from 15 years ago is a game changer and will find its way into a museum someday, if someone would stop ridiculing me long enough to really look at it.  Click on the picture for a larger version.  It took me only 3 years, teaching myself, to go from a medical dictionary to this.  And along the way, there was no one to talk to, no lectures, no tests, no laboratory, no technology, no collaboration, and no memorization.  This is what the ostrich vets, and especially the University of Illinois, ridiculed and suppressed.  My pet phrase for this is educated idiots.

November 11, 2011

I made multiple journeys to the University of Illinois, initially to the College of Veterinary Medicine.  I was in my mid-forties and a victim of age discrimination at the very least.  The first time I only went there with the Sequelae of adipose depletion chart and how running out of body fat caused death.  The person I talked to looked at it and demanded to know who did it.  He didn't believe it was me.  The second trip I met with an assistant dean who wouldn't even look at it.  He was so obnoxious.  The next time I went there I had the never-before-charted Adipose Depletion and the ATP Pathway, the common metabolic point of all autoimmune disorders, the cause and treatment of Fading Chick Syndrome in the rhea and ostrich, and professionally packaged products with the impressive results of an open label clinical trial.  I am sure they had file cabinets full of people walking in with that much.  I was always treated like an annoying 5 year old.  The arrogance was overt and disgusting. I saw all these 22 year old children running around with nothing more than grades that gained them access.  I had real accomplishments and I was treated like dirt.

November 13, 2011

I can feel the energy swirling around this, so let's up the ante:  time for a letter to Nature.

I complained to a lot of regulatory agencies.  Here is the 1997 letter to the AVMA ethics committee.

November 14, 2011

I allege I was educationally raped by the U of I for political gain.  On multiple occasions at county and state fairs I was encircled by cattlemen in an ominous fashion.  Our state representative told us the Beef Association did not want him to help any of the ratites, so he couldn't help us.  It was no stretch of the imagination to know that U of I had been told the same.  Even though I had removed the rhea and ostrich from competition with beef as food, they weren't even going to consider what was on the table.  This was one of the political reasons I was sold down the river.

And the functionally insane American Ostrich Association continued to battle the other two ratite species, playing right into the hands of the beef boys.

The story of the discovery of rhea extract.  I have identified a much better media channel than Nature Magazine.

November 16, 2011

Time to look at my history with the AOA.  It is ugly.

As a member seriously concerned about my significant investment, I faxed my concerns to all the state chapter presidents and the board of directors.  This was immediately before the convention.  I also objected to liberal doses of evangelism that were in his monthly letter to the members.  My husband was an executive for a large corporation with hundreds of employees in several states, and he wouldn’t even consider putting a religious Christmas decoration on the premises.

In January of 1994, after having invested well over $200,000 in the ratite industry, mostly ostrich, I realized that the whole thing was a hoax and there was no real market.  I could see the breeders' market was going to collapse (I have physic abilities) and take many trusting people down with it financially.  I wrote a letter to then president R. Lakey, who was running unopposed for a second term as AOA president with no plan, no leadership strategy, just more hype, requesting that he step down and describing the impending problem.  His major platform was to defeat the emu people.  Functionally insane.

 Needless to say, I immediately became public enemy number 1 (only to be proven correct within 18 months when the breeders' market collapsed).  I received hate mail from the religious zealots, and Robert Lakey used my letter to “prove the worth of the ostrich”.  That was more hype, no substantiation.  Tom Mantzel libeled me in the national magazine with more hype on the glory of the ostrich.  Unfortunately, I don’t have a copy of those anymore, I threw them away.  It was a brutal character assassination. 

To add insult to injury, over the 7 breeding seasons our ostriches were boarded at John Wade’s (DVM) farm we saw not one dime returned to us, and only in one year did any chicks survive to reach 6 months of age.  They (all 4 of them if I remember correctly) went to slaughter to pay their boarding fee.   I seriously question the validity of the sterling records of these breeders that I purchased, but how can I prove I was taken, they were examined by a veterinarian.  Furthermore, anytime a veterinarian cannot return a reasonable number of live chicks to an investor, ( I would have been happy with a conservative number of 5-10 per hen considering their glorious breeding records proffered prior to their sale) this is no animal to be selling to the general public as a future farm animal.  It was a scam that was perpetrated by professionals.  When I finally removed the birds from his farm I was told I owed several thousand dollars in boarding fees.  I could not believe this audacity after the dozens of dead chicks and unfertilized eggs that was our harvest.  There was never even an apology!

During her stint as president Karen Hicks-Alldredge, DVM never answered one of my letters which described the constant brutality and character assassination I was having to endure as a member of the state chapter, including a kangaroo court to have my membership revoked because I was quoted in an article as having said “people don’t want to eat big bird”, which was true!

I had heard, but could not prove, that Bud Alldredge, DVM (and currently a Veterinary Medical Examiner for the state of Texas-can you believe that!) and Tom Mantzel continued to insist that I be ostracized, ignored, and slandered at every opportunity, and boy did they ever.

In August 1994 we were the first people in the US to process rheas.  Processing birds was pretty rare at that time and it was a big deal, even drawing the Chicago Tribune to our little farm.  They did a follow-up story in May, 1995  when there was a ratite show open to the public.   A member of the Illinois AOA read the article and distributed a letter that my statement about people not wanting to eat big bird was destroying the markets.  (What markets?) 

This is the preliminary version of the Sequelae of Adipose Depletion that was brought in to U of I and sent to then AOA President, Karen Hicks-Alldredge, DVM, in the summer of 1995.  Given that no one had a clue that was going on with Fading Chick Syndrome, you would have thought someone would have talked to me.  That didn't happen.

In the fall of 1995, I walked into the next AOA meeting only to find myself in a kangaroo court to get my membership revoked. This is my husband's response.  They hated the truth.  Immediately after the meeting I sent this to the AOA president Hicks-Alldredge.  I never got an answer.  By now, I knew that the way it was, but I continued to occasionally write letters, which now provide me with this horrific paper trail.

In January, 1996 The Ostrich News published my article "Reducing chick mortality: Minimizing Adipose Depletion in rheas and ostriches"

I applied for the patent "Injection of Rhea and Ostrich Oils in Animals" in April 1996 and publicized it, so it was known.  So, knowing full well the outcome, I asked to serve on the AOA's research committee.  This is the PDF of the flowchart of the proposed pathways of adipose depletion, which was the next iteration, although still not complete.  No answer, although in rereading the letter, I was impressed.  The AOA did not want answers to their mortality problem, that is obvious.

I posted the ostrich chicks eating bugs youtube video on the AOA website. http://www.ostriches.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=2962#2962

August 1996-Filed the provisional patent application for rhea extract.   It included fading chick syndrome as an expression of Darwinian medicine initiated by toxins.

September 1996- I spoke in Brazil on the rhea, talking extensively on the problem with toxins and the therapeutic qualities of the meat.  I sent this letter to the AOA Board (I think that is who they were) and, of course, never received a reply even though I heard about the large number of chicks and breeders sold to Brazilians from the US.

October 1996- The AOA and Purina Mills formed a feed check-off program where all ostrich feed sold would earn the AOA a kick back.  Some of this food was sold to people who owned other birds.  He did not answer me.  Surprise, surprise.

November 29, 2011

 Hallelujah!  This is one of the businesses that perpetuated all the AOA claims and sold the breeders' marketing plan internationally.  Good riddance!  This is one of the best omens I could hope for. 

         From an email that just came in:

It has occurred to me that, since I do not have a supply of rhea extract to sell as the dietary supplements ATP Boost or Rhea Heart I can talk freely talk about what the supplements did! 

Rhea Heart is absolutely amazing.  We saw it reverse the symptoms of MS and Infectious mononucleosis.  With the flu it relieves the fever and other flu symptoms.  It has worked like an antibiotic in tooth infections.  It relieves all manner of pains.  It is truly a wonder drug with no side effects that were reported to us. 

When I was working on the second patent, the patent attorney wanted me to force a negative side effect, just to find out what would happen.  So, I decided to inject a dying rhea chick (the only "lab" animal I had access to) in the chest area.  I was cooking a large pot of rhea heart.  The chick was so weak it could no longer hold up its head and the breathing was labored.  I had it wrapped in a towel set on the pot lid for warmth.  It didn't have long to live.  So, I injected it in the chest with cooled rhea heart broth, wrapped it back up, and put it on top of the lid.  Doing other things I forgot about it, expecting to pick up a dead chick. About 10 minutes later I came back to the kitchen only to find the chick standing on its towel on top of the pot.  I had to leave to for half a day, so the chick was dead when I returned.

With the rhea extract, aka ATP Boost, we had stunning success with arthritis, fibromyalgia, allergies, psoriasis, and chronic fatigue syndrome.  The elderly loved the energy boost.  Diabetes reported blood sugar modulation.  In the future I will market it to sports teams; the medical market has too many pitfalls with the FDA.

There were 2 side effects with ATP Boost:

1.  Too much energy keeping people awake at night, rectified by a warning not to take it after noon

2.  Symptoms of detoxification, which subsided in a day or two.

And this is what the AOA and the University of Illinois refuse to acknowledge and continue to suppress.

December 7, 2011

Why not the emu? 

The emu is a strange animal that breeds in the shortening days of fall and through the winter.  Although they are bred in cold climates, it is really difficult to collect eggs before they freeze and raise tender chicks indoors.  During breeding season the breeding birds have no fresh grazing, which has to impact chick quality.  So, breeding them commercially can only happen in the deep South or California.

Then there is the whole breeding process.  In a nutshell, rheas have one-night stands, ostriches have affairs, and emus have to fall in love and get married.  That process takes time and space, and they may never accept who you have chosen for their mate. 

Coming: A letter to the Illinois Department of Professional Regulation with 60+ pages of supporting documents.  I was told to take it to law enforcement.

December 14, 2011

Biosecurity- This was a big issue because it was so wrong.  From the podium the vets spouted information on keeping the animals' quarters clean with lots of germ killing chemicals, a concept extrapolated from confinement farming in other species, but fatal to young rheas and ostriches.  More misinformation. 

However, there was someone who at least suspected chemicals could be a problem in these young birds, as in many other wild bird species.  That was The Dean of the College of Veterinary Medicine.  The CVM is also the site of the National Poison Control Center housed in the CVM building.  But he wasn't talking.  And, he was a cattleman.  So, when I showed up with the answer, all he had to do was keep me from getting any credibility and the budding ratite industry would fail.   By following his published article trail, I was able to establish a credible case that he had extensive expertise in this field.  Given the number of necropsies performed and the lack of a consistent pathogen or vitamin deficiency, it would have been a huge red flag to a toxicologist.

Why am I resurrecting this now? 

As I reconstructed the history of the ratite industry in this webpage I reread letters that have been dormant for years.  Going through it in 1996-97 I created two patents, developed an incredible supplement, spoke extensively in the US, Canada, and Brazil, ran a ratite farm with no hired help, served as Chairman of Research for the North American Rhea Association (up to 35 incoming phone calls per day-no secretary), had a huge garden, studied biochemistry and toxicology in every non-occupied moment, was the wife of an executive with a heavy work load, and mother of 2 busy pre-teens. 

I couldn't see the forest for the trees.  I can see the big picture very clearly now and am taking the steps necessary to right the wrongs.

December 18, 2011

Just returned from Oklahoma State University where my son received his MBA on Friday night.  He starts work for his father on Wednesday.  The economy may be bad, but not for us. 

To continue the sordid affair:  The last time I met with Ted Valli I had the ATP Pathway, autoimmune disorders, the cause of fading chick syndrome, and Rhea Extract as a licensed product, ATP Boost.  I was ready to put it all on the table.  Grants Acquisition Administrator, Terry Rathgeber, was also there.  It was a short meeting.  I started out with by declaring Fading Chick Syndrome was an accelerated autoimmune disorder.  He responded emphatically, like he knew something, with "IT IS NOT an autoimmune disorder."  I was shocked and so was open-mouthed Terry.  I was expecting he would have asked me to support that theory and then I would pull out my charts and walk him through it.  He was not interested in discussing the matter any further.  That was the last time I had any face to face meeting with him. 

Several years later he stalked me at CFAR meeting.  I did not want anything to do with this person and I felt threatened. He got away with that, too.

December 20, 2011

The disconnect in the last meeting with Ted Valli was the result of neither of us knowing what the other knew.  At the time, had I known he was a toxicologist I would have understood his perspective.  He did not know the connection I had found between autoimmune disorders and toxins.  So, in effect we were saying the same thing but didn't know it.  I didn't challenge him because I didn't have any fight left; it was just yet another attack by a veterinarian.

Plus, he had another motive:  he was part of the team that set the "safe" toxin levels for Health Canada.  They based the official levels on studies done in rats. 

Since rats and mice are the typical study animals their diets are very closely monitored.  I discussed the lab rodent diet with Purina when I was looking at alternative to the currently available ratite diets.  I was told that lab animal diets had the tightest standards so as not to interfere with studies.  The nutrition provided was superior to any other diet Purina made. 

So, his team extrapolated the "safe" levels in humans from what appeared to be safe levels in rodents, although the superior rodent diet was a factor NOT included in their conclusions.  I imagine the "safe" levels would have been different if the rats were fed Cocoa Puffs for breakfast, a Happy Meal for lunch, and a hot dog for dinner.  So, in his world the toxin-induced Fading Chick Syndrome could not have been an accelerated autoimmune disorder.

The final conclusion to his toxicity studies was that the "safe" levels only applied in cases of extremely superior nutrition in rats.  Extrapolating to humans in this situation is over-running the data.

If I was right, he was wrong.  I do not think he was going to even consider that.

December 21, 2011

This is the letter that IL DPR told me to take to law enforcement.  It is busy season; I will post the supporting documents later.

I allege he strongly suspected what was killing the ostrich and rhea chicks by the thousands.  And he wasn't talking. 

To all the universities that invested in ratite programs: look at this.  The only major midwest university was U of I with Ted Valli, at the helm of both the college of veterinary medicine and the National Poison Control Center, with no ratite program.  This is a scandal on the order of Penn State, maybe bigger.  This affected thousands of people on thousands of farms and hundreds of thousands of chicks.  Didn't he take some kind of oath as a veterinarian?