Some tall, gangly guys and gals will be the center of attention at the Salt Palace this weekend when the American Ostrich Association holds its fourth annual convention in Salt Lake City.
On display will be live ostriches shipped in from Zion View Ranch in St. George, one of the largest ostrich operations in the nation.About 200 people are expected to attend the convention to learn more about raising, marketing and profiting from the big birds.
"The trade show will involve all sorts of ostrich products and things an ostrich farmer would need: big incubators, machinery people would use to process the meat," said Janis Gary, the association's communications director. "There also will be ostrich products such as decorated egg shells, Western boots and leather products. People always enjoy walking through the show."
The association has about 1,500 members, but there are no solid numbers on how big the ostrich industry is in the United States. "Part of our problem is that we're so small and so young, the government is not keeping tabs on such things yet," Gray said.
Utah's ostrich industry is holding its own and has had a stable and successful year. That's a dramatic contrast to some other parts of the country where the bottom dropped out for ostrich farmers. Some were desperate enough to let their birds loose and animal-control officers picked them up.
Utah's ostrich producers, on the other hand, are part of the Intermountain Ostrich Cooperative, which runs a slaughtering plant in Fillmore and others in Idaho and Ohio.
The industry in Utah also has aggressively marketed ostrich products. One of the most important steps has been to expand beyond the niche market of upscale restaurants and catalogs into mainstream venues where mass revenues beckon.
Albertsons Food & Drug Stores carry ostrich meat, as do some Associated Food Stores such as Dan's Foods Inc.
This year, Zion View products won't be in the tony Neiman Marcus Christmas catalog but will be in the Pfaelzer Brothers catalog and the Viansa Winery catalog.
"We're also listed on several gourmet food Web sites on the Internet," said Randy Wilke, Zion View marketing director.
"We have a nationwide marketing network and we're shipping product all over the country. We're also working internationally. We've got business with Japan and some things pending with China," Wilke said.
Americans also are trying to make inroads into South Africa's longstanding hold on the ostrich leather market. "That goes back to having birds raised properly so the skins aren't scarred, removing the skins properly and getting them tanned properly. We're working on all three aspects."
However, ostrich meat seems to have a built-in market in the United States with the current trend toward buying low-fat foods. Americans also like red meat, which ostrich meat is despite the fact it comes from a bird. A 100-gram piece of cooked ostrich meat has 2.8 grams of fat and 140 calories. The same amount of chicken has 7.4 grams of fat and 190 calories.