The Rural Voice, 1991-04, Page 12totiwthItiolosorotiotookottiAthee0
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8 THE RURAL VOICE
AL AND PAT MAKE
EMU FARMING PAY
Keith Roulston, a newspaper publisher
and playwright who lives near Blyth,
is the originator and past publisher of
The Rural Voice.
Can't make money on the farm,
you say? What's wrong with you? Al
and Pat Jodoin have it figured out.
My father would love Al and Pat.
As I was growing up on the farm, he
could often be seen in the kitchen with
a stub of a pencil and an old envelope.
When asked what he was doing, he'd
say "figurin'." Once in a while he'd
let you in on the figurin' and it would
turn out to be a wonderful new way to
make money on the farm when no-
thing else seemed to be working.
He'd have a new way to arrange
the barn and put in more cows or
would have discovered a new crop
that would actually make a profit.
Usually reality, or the banker, would
come between father and the profits he
sought, but when it was on paper, it
worked. Dad made more money on
the back on an envelope than he ever
made on our farm.
I've fallen prey to the same
syndrome myself over the years.
Today, of course, you can make things
look much more official than a pencil
and the back of an envelope. You can
use a spread sheet program on the
computer and lay it all out, looking
official enough to certainly convince
yourself, if not the loan officer at the
bank. Juggle a few figures, put a few
different numbers in the formula,
punch the button, and you can make
the most hopeless situation look rosy.
Anyway, back to Al and Pat. They
have it all figured out. The Jodoins
are a couple from Houston who
decided they wanted a slower pace of
life and moved to the country. One
day Al came home and told Pat he
wanted to get into emu ranching. She
thought he was nuts until they went to
visit some emu ranches and she decid-
ed she liked the big birds. Emus, in
case you don't know, are originally
from Western Australia and are some-
thing like ostriches. They can, accord-
ing to the Jodoins in an article I read,
provide an oil used in cosmetics; meat
that is the health food of the '90s be-
cause it tastes like beef but is low in
calories, carbohydrates, and fat; can
have their skins tanned into a leather
favoured on the trendy French and
Italian leather markets; and their
feathers are used for elegant clothing
accessories.
The Jodoins raised their first crnn
of 40 emus last year from a couple of
pairs of two -year-olds. But they've
got bigger plans. By the breeding
season that began last October, they
planned to have 11 pairs of breeding
birds. They expect to raise 20 to 30
birds from each pair, which could
mean 300 birds (I can visualize my
father's pencil racing ahead with the
figures). Now, the market price for
emu chicks three months or older,
(Dad, you'd love it) is $1,500. That
means they could gross $450,000.
The Jodoins point out that if you
have a cow, it will only give one calf a
year that will bring you $300 to $600.
One emu pair, however, can give up to
40 young that could give you an
income of $30,000 to $60,000.
I was all set to drive down to Texas
myself and bring back a few birds
until I started to wonder how many
people there are around who will pay
$1,500 for an emu chick. I don't think
there are too many restaurants buying
emu meat around here yet. Seems to
me the only way you can get that
$1,500 per chick is if you can find
other people like the Jodoins who
have dreams of getting rich quick.
The price will only stay high as long
as you can find people wanting to buy
breeding stock. The problem is,
someday somebody's got to find
somebody to buy a bird for the oil,
meat, skin and feathers.
Oh well, it was a nice thought.
Guess I'll fish another envelope out of
the garbage and figure out some other
way of getting rich.0