World Ostrich Association

Included in this edition:
More Rogue Traders
South African Genetics
The Important Role of Standard Definitions
Avian Influenza still active in South Africa

More Rogue Traders
Newsletter No 99 reported the prevalence of rogue traders – or to put it more bluntly Scams relating to the marketing of ostrich eggs, birds and ostrich products.

We offer a special thank you to one of our members for alerting us to 2 further scams that he has uncovered while searching for stock for his own business. The sellers made a number of errors that should alert buyers to their authenticity. Some examples:

The seller suggested he had a large production unit in South Africa and was able to ship immediately at a time when we all know the South African industry is unable to export at this time as result of the Avian Influenza outbreaks we have been reporting. The seller made no reference to the current inability to export and therefore would be unable to deliver until the current export ban is lifted.
The seller reported having a large unit that was started in 2003 and supporting 30,000 ostriches. There are few, if any, production units of this scale currently in South Africa and not in the location he gave.
His paper work suggested sending fertile eggs by sea from South Africa with delivery in 3 days.
He included a photo of boxes suggesting they were a supply awaiting shipment. Close examination of the photograph indicated a chicken logo on the box.

In addition he mentioned packing 360 eggs to a single box. The size of the boxes in the photos may take 360 chicken eggs, but 360 ostrich eggs would not fit into those boxes!

There were a number of discrepancies in the sample paper work submitted to the potential client.

The emails and offer letter appeared to come from the United States from a long established company.
The web address quoted is copyright 1997 as it is so old and not updated.
The prices quoted are those for shipments from the US in the 1990s not current market prices.
Further investigation led to:

Links to an operation in Cameroon using photographs from a Mexican web site
Several different directory listings for this operation
Wording on these web sites that look plagiarised from the US web site and include a company that we know stopped making ostrich feed 10 years or more ago.

A reason for the increase of these scams is the increasing shortage of everything ostrich driven by a combination of the ongoing troubles with the South African production and the failure of commercial levels of production to yet develop outside of South Africa.

If any members have had similar experiences please would you email me? You can do that by replying to this email.

South African Genetics
A thesis produced last year by a South Africa Master’s student was a comparative study on performance of the Zimbabwe Blue (ZM), Kenyan Reds (KR) and South African Black (SAB). The encouraging news here is that they are at last taking a more serious interest in Genetics and recognising the need to identify the different traits of the genetic material they have. This thesis is some 95 pages long, so it is not possible to comment in detail – but we can comment the basic principles that need to be in place in order to assess genetic performance.

Back in 1998 I asked Willem Burger from the Klein Karoo Kooperasie why they did not feed their birds better. His answer was “we need better genetics first”. This has been their serious error. It is impossible to establish genetic performance while livestock are demonstrating nutritional deficiencies.

This is a quote from Chapter 1 Page 2:
The South African ostrich industry is characterized by poor egg and chick production, impaired hatchability and survivability of chicks (Cloete et al., 2001, 2008b). Its therefore seems feasible to implement crossbreeding systems in the commercial ostrich industry in an attempt to alleviate the above mentioned problems.

The first part of that statement proves the nutritional and management issues and the premise is that by cross breeding they may gain better results. Unless the nutrition is correct and supported by good management, you cannot determine the true genetic performance. They have to correct that first if they will ever establish their good performing genetics.

Chapter 5 Page 56 discusses the treatment of the breeder birds during their off season. It confirms they still use the long out dated starvation and then flushing of the birds instead of using this period as a time to replenish the breeder birds’ depleted nutrient reserves and put build condition on the birds. They mention the shrubs that make up the vegetation of the Klein Karroo that we discussed in Newsletter 103, making it impossible to determine the actual nutrient intake of the breeder birds.

Chapter 4 Page 42 mentioned:
Birds were slaughtered during October 2009 (45 males and 31 females) and in March 2010 (13 males and 16 females) at an average slaughter age of 437 ± 4.4 days. Birds weighing less 60 kg were not included in this study.

Why would they be slaughtering in 437 days – it will never be commercially viable to farm commercial ostrich with a slaughter date of 437 days? The good news is that they are finally talking “days to slaughter” instead of months. If they have birds weighing less than 60kgs at that age, why are questions not asked for the reasons these birds failed to thrive?

As always with South African studies there is minimal information on the important issues of diet and management but sufficient to confirm the sub-standard nutrition that we know ostrich require in a commercial environment.

Chapter 3 Page 30 describes the management for the first few weeks and also the feed:
For the first 30 days they received bio-vitamins mixed with luke-warm water every morning, to strengthen their immune systems. They also received a balanced pre-starter diet for the first ten days that were sprinkled with chopped lucerne and oats. From three months of age the chicks were left outside depending on the ambient conditions. At the age of three to four months the chicks were moved to the feedlots where they received a grower diet of 10.5MJ/ME energy and 160g protein/kg dry matter on an ad libitum basis. Water was made available ad libitum and the water containers were cleaned and disinfected at regular intervals. The juveniles were sorted according to their weight to ensure that they received optimal feeding and were weighed monthly (Engelbrecht et al., 2008)

That paragraph proves the lack of nutritional understanding in production livestock – picking up on a few points to support that statement:

It may be necessary to add vitamins to water when the rations available are not up to standard, but these are the research scientists paid to produce production rations. As soon as you place vitamins in water it becomes impossible to control intake as some birds may drink more than others. The place for supplemented vitamins is in the rations.
Reference is made to the “balanced pre-starter diet” and then they sprinkle chopped lucerne and oats on top. That immediately changes the overall balance of the rations and they already have stated the water has additional vitamins. If they are suffering impaired survivability as mentioned on in Chapter 1 Page 2 is it not time that the South African industry start to ask the question – are their rations really balanced and providing adequate nutrients?

Later on in the paper they discuss meat colour and drip loss comparisons between the breeds. This again illustrates the lack of understanding on the role of nutrition in controlling all aspects of production, including meat quality and meat colour. Only when that is understood and applied to the rations will it become possible to compare genetic comparisons.

The Role of Standardisation of Definitions
Chapter 4 Page 55 discussed the dressing percentage and how it was calculated. The discussion is a little confusing and it references Sales 1999 and the World Ostrich Association definitions:

Page 55: The dressing percentage is calculated as the carcass weight/slaughter weight*100. Carcass weight can be described as the two thighs hanging distal to the epiphysis of the tibia (Sales, 1999), with the neck and leg bones sawed no longer than 15 cm in length, with the rib cage (the fat pad is removed), wings and tail still attached (World Ostrich Association, 2008). The carcass was stored in a cooling room at the Oudtshoorn Abattoir for approximately 24 hours, and one thigh was collected the next morning to remove the sample (M. iliofibularis) used for the physical measurements of cooking loss percentage, drip loss percentage, instrumental tenderness and colour measurements.

This is a further illustration of the need for standardisation for such purposes as highlighted by Stewart Paulson in the January newsletter.

Avian Influenza still active in South Africa
At the end of January the SA industry web site reported the latest round of testing for H5N2 showed no further cases and was reported to the OIE during February. The bad news is that there has now been H7N1 found in Ostrich. The first report of this outbreak was submitted to the OIE at the beginning of February. You can view both reports from the OIE 2012 index - http://www.oie.int/animal-health-in-the-world/update-on-avian-influenza/2012/.