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Comment by GordonS | Hacker News Reader

That might explain why it's so difficult to find ostrich meat for sale. It's a real shame, as ostrich meat really is absolutely delicious - it's sort of sweet, savoury, mildly gamey, beefy and chicken'y all at once! Meat has a nice grain too, making for pleasant eating.

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Ostriches are extremely powerful, dangerously fickle and unpredictable, basically a dinosaur the size of a small car

Emu on the other hand are small and relatively docile but still pretty dangerous very smart and can jump very high, so fencing is no joke.

I just dont see any upside to raising these giant birds

You just described why dinosaurs are cool.

Sometimes I think the easiest path to Jurassic Park would be to try to breed really big ostriches. On the other hand it might be a better project to try to get sign language gorillas to teach other gorillas how to use sign language.

Circa 2000 my wife and I were planning to get into farming and would up visiting quite a few Llama and Alpaca farms that were frequently run by very rich retirees from corporate America. We wound up keeping horses which are a much better business because people really do want to ride horses.

I think there is a strong argument to made that cassowarys are true living dinosaurs. They're really something else. The only bird to have be reliably and repeatedly recorded as killing adult humans, including an incident in Florida in 2019 where a hand-raised one killed it's owner.

Up to 150lbs of muscle, claw, and beak, and they can stand over 6ft tall.

https://xkcd.com/1211/

> Emu on the other hand are small and relatively docile

Emus are so weirdly neurotic and aggressive, I hate being around them. If an Ostrich is even more unpredictable than an Emu it's hard to imagine farming them would even be possible.

I quite like Emu I've not seen them being aggressive towards people. Some of them are just not frightened of people so they'll come towards you, and if they think you have some food... But the ones I've met have been pretty gentle, eat out your hand. Neurotic and unpredictable: I think they're just really stupid.

If I had a bit more land I'd quite like to have some Emu. I like them and my mother is scared of them so I see only positives.

My wife and I did a drive-through Safari park thing in Arkansas a few years back. You get a bag of feed each and can feed anything that's allowed to approach cars, including emu.

There's one spot where there's a bridge over what's effectively a ditch with a small creek running through it. A few emu followed us around the park, but several of them camped out on the far side of the bridge.

When I drove into the bridge, they all moved to the middle of it and boxed the car in. They wouldn't let us pass until most of them got a handful or so of food.

It was quite surreal, and I don't know that I'd enjoy trying to run a farm of large birds like that.

One of the main reasons I try to stay remote is the spring to fall farmer's markets in the area I live. Getting Ostrich each week is awesome. Especially in the time of year I'm often finishing the last bit of shedding the extra winter weight gained. It's a drop in replacement for other red meat for many of my meals with less fat to keep the calories lower. It takes to taco seasonins really well.

I had ostrich several times during peak Mad Cow Disease* mania.

I cannot recall appreciating it, probably because 1) its gamey flavor was a poor substitute for beef 2) my teenage palate was not appreciative of such "interesting" flavors.

But perhaps it would be worth re-visiting with semi-refined tastebuds?

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bovine_spongiform_encephalopat...

Yeah, now that you mention it I haven't seen it around the last few years. I remember it was fairly commonly on the store shelf years ago. Was fine but was expensive compared to beef and wasn't too different in many cases so I very rarely bought it.

I've had Ostrich meat once and didn't particularly like it.

Now, Canada Goose meat... yum.

Seriously? We can eat the bastards and they're still pooping and blocking traffic everywhere??

Commercial harvest of them is banned, I think (Migratory Bird Treaty Act, which implements a treaty with Canada, Mexico, Japan, and Russia.)

There are various detailed federal regulations pertaining to Canada Geese allowing control in certain situations.

https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-50/chapter-I/subchapter-B...

They reputedly take serious effort to cook effectively.

You're like the news outlets complaining that millennials don't buy diamonds and vacation homes.

How? there is zero blame in the comment, merely expression personal disappointment that the thing they like isn't widely available, while simultaneously being understanding of the reasons why it isn't.

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