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BettaFishOfRage t1_j54g0qb wrote

Reply to comment by FireITGuy in Do beavers get splinters in their mouths, and if they do, how do they deal with them? by OldManIrv

Thanks for the info. I don't want to work with beavers specifically, I was mostly curious about how people navigate themselves towards such a specialty.

'roos and wallabies? In the states no less? That's just weird. I didn't even know people had those as pets here.

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PsyFiFungi t1_j54mv3h wrote

I knew a guy with an ostrich (or was it an emu?) in Alabama on his farm. I was young so don't remember which it was or if he had it legally, but he had it.

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PerspectivePure2169 t1_j55gfla wrote

They were a fad for small farms for a while in the 90s. Everyone was going to get rich selling ostrich meat, it was healthier than beef yada yada. Fertilized eggs were selling for ridiculous prices.

And now? Nothing.

The fad has moved on to alpacas now. Everyone is going to get rich selling that alpaca wool.

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ironicf8 t1_j58xfj1 wrote

Was the meat not good, or was there some other reason it didn't pan out?

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PerspectivePure2169 t1_j5a08xl wrote

I mean the real reason it didn't pan out was the same group physchology behind all fads - were fidget spinners fun to play with? Sure, but nowhere near enough to justify 40 billion of them being made in 18 months. And the manufacturers who hopped on last didn't do real great I'm thinking.

The meat was all right, and there's a limited market for feathers and leather. If you can find it, and if you can find a butcher who will process them.

But it was, and is, a tiny market. Americans were in no way ready to drop beef for emu. It's hard to market lamb and goat, let alone ostrich.

The ostrich/emu and alpaca fads are very similar because neither is really about harvesting anything but instead about breeding to satisfy growing demand. Which makes it a bubble, a fad, a craze, like Dutch Tulip Mania hundreds of years ago.

Most of the people raising them never wanted to kill them, they were hobby farmers and these were their cute pets. But they thought they could make big bucks setting everyone else up to grow cute pets too.

And that inherently has an end to its profitability.

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