Ranch History 1980 was the year a hobby of incubating, hatching and raising birds literally grew. From raising small birds, (guinea, chicken, duck, quail and pheasant) Lesa Floeck advanced to raising the big flightless birds known as ratites. Since that day in 1980 when she received her first Rhea, she was intrigued. Lesa had also been fascinated with eggs and their development, but the large ratite eggs presented a challenge. From the Rhea to Ostrich to Emu, the ranch grew to become New Mexico's largest leader in the Ratite industry. Floeck's has been there from the re-birth of the industry in the 1980's to the peak in the late 80's and early 90's, and through the time the industry bottomed out in the late 90's. Today, Lesa Floeck is one of only a few ratite breeders to remain in the business. She still believes in the Ratite industry and has worked hard to keep the industry alive. 2006 brought a renewed interest in the birds. She was getting calls for fertile eggs, baby chicks, slaughter birds and breeder birds. Leather prices were on the rise and there was a renewed interest. Meat sales were exceeding the number available for slaughter birds. Supply was not keeping up with the demand. 2007 was a busy year with good production of eggs from the ostrich breeder hens. I had lots of egg orders and was custom hatching ostrich chicks for customers. The demand has increased for ostrich meat and has remained strong. Most of the ostrich hatching eggs and ostrich chicks were picked up here at the ranch by customers or specially delivered by couriers. 2008 has also been a busy year with the ostrich breeder birds in full production. I did not hatch any ostrich chicks this year but only sold ostrich hatching eggs to customers. These eggs were delivered by special arrangements as ostrich hatching eggs must be handled carefully and delivered promptly. The demand for ostrich meat still exceeds the supply available here in the United States so producers have good markets for the birds. I generally have ostrich hatching eggs available except for during the colder winter months. Spring production usually starts in February and continues through September here in New Mexico as we have a nice climate with few extreme temperatures. 2009 was a fantastic year of change with all of the breeder birds producing well. I decided to only do limited custom hatch orders for minimum 20 ostrich chicks. The hatching kept me extremely busy as I had several orders for export to overseas destinations. I am mostly retired from hatching now and just sell ostrich hatching eggs to my customers. Some of the ostrich hens have continued to lay eggs during the winter months and these eggs have been sold for fresh ostrich eating eggs. The rhea egg production season started in May 2009 with a strong demand for the rhea hatching eggs. And of course the emus started their egg production season in November 2009 with good production during the winter months. There has been lots of interest in the emus and the market for the eggs has remained strong. This entire past 2009 has been a challenge just to keep up with the renewed interest in the ostrich, emus, and rheas and there has been a market for all of the products. We are beginning the new year in 2010 with a very positive outlook with increased demand for the birds and eggs.
Images from our early days: Under Construction--More to Come!
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