Ostrich Dreams
Even though there's always been more hype than profit, boosters and believers have ridden ostriches through booms and busts for the last 140 years.
Note: This post was previously published in August 2023.
In December of 1882, a gaggle of 22 seasick and presumably very confused ostriches stepped off an ocean liner and onto the docks of New York City. For the last several months, these hapless birds had been making the arduous sea voyage from Cape Town to Buenos Aires, and then to New York. As discontent as these ostriches must have been, they were the lucky ones — of the 200 birds that left with them from Cape Town, nine out of ten did not survive the trip. And while the worst of their journey was over, these ostriches had not yet reached their final destination. These birds were bound for Anaheim, California, where they would become the founding members of America’s first ostrich farm.1
There was a lot of money to be made in ostrich feathers, and Charles Sketchley wanted a bigger piece of the business. In 1882, Sketchley was one of South Africa’s largest ostrich farmers in an industry that was still finding its legs. Ostriches had been domesticated just 20 years before, right as they were facing extermination at the hands of feather hunters. Not a moment too soon, entrepreneurs figured out that raising ostriches on farms, where feathers could be sustainably harvested several times a year without killing the birds, could be more profitable and reliable than hunting them down on horseback.2
And selling ostrich feathers was incredibly profitable. Each plume, destined for a lady’s hat or stole or boa, could sell for as much as five dollars. The United States was importing $3.5 million worth of feathers annually (equivalent to $104 million today), of which almost all came from South Africa, where it was the country’s fourth-biggest export after diamonds, gold, and wool.3
Charles Sketchley figured that he might be able to gain an edge in the business by moving his operations to America. No matter how light feathers were, the cost of shipping them across the Atlantic cut into profits, which were further gouged by the hefty 20 percent duty the US charged on foreign feathers. So with this first shipment of 22 ostriches, Sketchley founded America’s first ostrich farm with the dream of revolutionizing the feather industry.4
Ostrich Dreams
Sketchley’s business proposition seemed sound. An adult ostrich sports 25 plumes on each wing, which can be plucked every seven or eight months. All together, these feathers might yield an annual revenue of $250. Female ostriches could lay 90 eggs a year, tantalizing meteoric rates of growth.5
Ostrich boosters and ostrich investors breathlessly predicted a glorious economic future borne on ostrich wings. In 1898, a report to the US Commissioner of Agriculture suggested that “the turkey is a Thanksgiving bird, but the ostrich might properly be a New Year or an Easter one.”6 In 1900, Edwin Cawston, an ostrich ranch owner himself, predicted that “the output of ostrich feathers will join that of raisins and oranges and become inter alia one of the leading industries of the Golden State.”7 One enthusiast expected to “see ostrich feathers quoted in a few years along with cotton, wool, beef and petroleum, as a profitable Texas product,”8 while another gushed, “when domesticated in Texas, as they doubtless soon will be, we expect to hear that the cow-boys utilize ostriches in herding cattle. Their fleetness should make them excellent mounts for scouts and couriers.”9
While much of this excitement was highly inflated, there were legitimate reasons to expect a domestic ostrich industry to thrive. By the dawn of the 20th century, hunters slaughtering wild herons and egrets to supply the fashion industry’s lucrative plume trade were facing mounting public condemnation, and state and federal legislatures were passing increasingly strict laws to protect birds in response. From an economic and moral perspective, feathers from captive-bred ostriches were an attractive alternative. “The tender-hearted maiden may wear [them] in happy consciousness that her pretty hat has cost the life of no hapless fowl,” wrote the Millinery Trade Review in 1904, adding that “the dealer may handle [them] without fear of coming into collision with the Audubon society or the bird laws.”10
The California Ostrich
Sketchley’s experimental ostrich farm became a national curiosity, drawing attention from the New York Times, Harper’s Weekly, and Scientific American, and encouraging a spate of imitators to establish their own ostrich farms throughout the southwest. But ostrich farms didn’t just catch the attention of investors and economic prognosticators. Curious locals also visited the farms in droves to gawk at the enormous, gangly birds, and within nine months of starting up his venture, Sketchley had to contend with more than 100 tourists dropping by his farm every day. Realizing that he had a secondary business opportunity on his hands, Sketchley began charging a 50-cent admission, which visitors were more than happy to pay.11
Other entrepreneurs opened tourist-centered ostrich farms that proved to be early templates for Disneyland. Arriving by train, visitors could spend an entire day at the farms engaging in ostrich-centered activities or wandering the gardens. Kids got their picture taken holding baby ostriches. Visitors gathered to watch regularly-scheduled ostrich pluckings, advertised as “Exciting! Perilous! Wonderful!”12 Tourists took rides on ostrich-back or in ostrich-drawn wagons. They amused themselves by tossing oranges to the ostriches, which the birds would gulp down whole.
By the time of the first world war, however, much of the energy around the ostrich industry had petered out. During the war, the price of ostrich feathers plummeted, when “the world had something more important to think of than the trimming of hats.”13 Buoyed by tourism, some of the farms survived the collapse of the feather market, but as more novel and exciting pastimes arrived in California, the appeal of ostrich parks waned. Los Angeles’s last ostrich park closed in 1953.14
Boom and Bust
After decades of dormancy, the domestic ostrich industry experienced another revival that began in 1986. That year, Congress passed the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act, which banned many imports from South Africa in an effort to pressure the country to abandon its racist policies. These sanctions included ostrich feathers, ostrich leather, and ostrich meat. South Africa still dominated the markets for these products, and cutting off their supply sent the prices for ostrich products skywards.
Entrepreneurs expecting to make easy money flocked to open their own ostrich ranches, led by urban professionals with high hopes and high incomes but no experience raising poultry. Eggs that cost $15 in 1985 were selling for $3,000 just four years later, as desperate investors outbid each other trying to grow their flocks.15 A pair of adult ostriches might fetch $60,000. The number of ostriches in America surged from 6,000 in 1989 to somewhere between 50,000 and 60,000 in 1993.16
This mania for ostriches created a classic speculative bubble. The prices for ostriches themselves far outstripped the value of their products on the market. In 1993, the Los Angeles Times remarked that specialized tanneries and slaughterhouses had not yet been built to process the ostriches, “so for now, the only real ostrich products being sold here are ostrich eggs, chicks and birds.”17
Later that year, Congress repealed the ban on South African imports in response to the country’s democratic reforms, returning cheap ostrich meat and feathers to the market and once again cutting the legs out from under America’s ostrich farmers. By 1995, “the industry was a smoking ruin.” Dreams of high demand for ostrich meat and leather foundered in the face of supply chains that were ill-equipped to process ostriches and consumers that were indifferent to their products.18
By the time the US Department of Agriculture started collecting statistics on ostriches in 2002, the number of the birds in the country had fallen to 20,560. By 2017, it withered to 4,738.19 But that doesn’t mean that dreams of a resurgent ostrich future have also disappeared. Every few years, news articles pop up about the promise of ostriches as a red meat that is sustainable, iron-rich, low-calorie, and low-fat. Someday, the ostrich’s time will come. But until then it will remain, as it has always been, the bird of the future.
T. C. Duncan. “Ostrich Farming in America.” Report of the Commissioner of Agriculture. United States: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1889, p. 699.
South Africa’s exports of ostrich feathers grew from 8 tons of wild ostrich feathers in 1860 to 80 tons of farm-raised feathers in 1880. Feather exports peaked in 1913, at 500 tons. Doughty, Robin. “Ostrich farming American style.” Agricultural History 47, no. 2 (1973): 133-145.
Charles Sketchley, “Ostrich Farming in California.” Harper’s Weekly, November 21, 1885, vol. 29, pg. 763-764.
T. C. Duncan. “Ostrich Farming in America.”
Charles Sketchley, “Ostrich Farming in California.”
T. C. Duncan. “Ostrich Farming in America.”
Edwin Cawston, “Ostrich Farming in California”, Harper’s Weekly, 44, (September 24, 1900), p. 903.
Millinery Trade Review. United States: Marriotte & Company, 1905, p. 102.
T. C. Duncan. “Ostrich Farming in America.”
“Appertainin’ to the Ostrich.” Millinery Trade Review, vol. 29. United States: Marriotte & Company, 1904, p. 41. The following year, the Audubon Society, which was leading the crusade against the feather trade, voiced its official approval, stating “Ostrich feathers are legitimate as well as beautiful decorations and are approved by the Audubon Societies,” as “their use does not entail the sacrifice of life, nor does it cause the slightest suffering to the Ostrich.” “Educational Leaflet No. 13: The Ostrich.” Bird-Lore, Vol 7, no. 2, p. 154.
“Anaheim Ostrich Farm.” New York Times, October 28, 1883
Thrasher, Jill. “Ostrich Farms: An Early Southern California Tourist Destination.” Sherman Library & Gardens, July 1, 2020.
American Fox and Fur Farmer. United States: American fox and fur farmer Incorporated, 1921.
Nathan Masters. “Southern California’s First Amusement Parks? Ostrich Farms.” KCET. September 20, 2012.
Asher Elbein, “The Rise and Fall (and Rise Again?) of the Texas Ostrich Industry,” Texas Monthly, April 23, 2021.
Yost, Paula. “Related Flightless Birds Join Ostrich Import Ban.” Washington Post, August 19, 1989.
Denise Lavoie, “From Hide to Eyelashes, Ostrich Is a Useful Bird–Low Cholesterol Too,” Los Angeles Times, February 28, 1993.
Asher Elbein, “The Rise and Fall (and Rise Again?) of the Texas Ostrich Industry.”
USDA Census of Agriculture Historical Archive, 2002-2017
Yet again, you have found a piece of bird history I knew nothing about. I guess some people with land must keep them as pets now?