Edible Sacramento Summer 2022

producing eggs,” Toderica says, adding that the birds can live more than 50 years. Almost every part of the bird has commercial value, from the eggs (both for their contents and shell) to the feathers (for dec oration as well as anti-static dusters), the meat (red meat, like beef, but with less cholesterol), and the skin (for leather goods). Since ostriches don’t fly, groups of themare herds, not flocks. But just like chickens and quail, female ostriches are hens, and the males are called roosters. In some ways, ostrich ranching is more like raising cattle than chickens. Mature ostriches are big animals, weighing 350 to 400 pounds; adults grow up to nine feet tall. And they run — up to 40miles per hour. “They’re scary!” Toderica says. In 2018, Toderica started with 15 chicks. He now has about 100 ostriches. At his farm in south Sacramento County, Toderica raises his birds primarily for breeding, not eating. He sells un fertilized eggs sold to the public by appointment, for $45 apiece.

Big Birds, Huge Eggs While growing up in Moldova, a tiny Eastern European nation, Ivan Toderica, owner of California Ostrich Valley in Elk Grove, dreamed of raising ostriches. In the 1990s, ostrich farming was touted as a way to get rich. Ostrich mania attracted investors as well as farmers. “A single fertilized egg cost $5,000,” Toderica recalls. “But nobody was really making money.” After immigrating to the United States, Toderica still kept thinking about ostrich ranching. “It felt like something interesting and out of the ordinary. I did a lot of research. Eventually, I found out there’s a whole sci ence to raising these birds,” he says. Theworld’s largest bird, ostriches have a lot to oŠer. Pound for pound, they take less feed than cattle and less space, but while a cowhas only one calf per year, an ostrich hen can lay up to 80 eggs annually … for two decades ormore. “I know people with 25-year-old [ostrich] hens who are still

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