Those who can’t fly can show their mettle by running fast. It’s not humans we’re talking about, and there is no metaphor here.
Six giant, lanky, flightless birds — four males and two females — will provide an audience with a new kind of entertainment every weekend in September: the 50-meter bird race.
The show will take place at Yasnohorodka farm, some 30 kilometers from Kyiv.
The farm’s owner, Serhiy Radchenko, imported the idea after visiting an ostrich breeding farm in the Canary Islands and riding an ostrich himself.
“Though I fell down a couple of times, it was not really dangerous. I was so excited that I decided to bring this unique sport to Ukraine,” Radchenko said.
And so, in 2001, he ordered some 30 African baby ostriches from Belgium to Ukraine’s village of Yasnohorodka. Today, there are 300 ostriches in his backyard.
The six racing ostriches, however, are not the fastest, as it turns out. They were selected for their calm temperament.
Skilled jockeys have been training the birds for over three months to make them run at their maximum speed of about 70kilometers per hour – the top land speed of any bird. Riding them, however, proved easier than catching them.
Serhiy Radchenko
“An ostrich is an easily frightened bird. It takes us five to 10 minutes to put a black rag over its head to calm it down,” said jockey Roman Tsokur.
“It could carry jockeys weighing no more than 75 kilograms. To ride, one must know how to balance well. If your balance is off, the ostrich will try pushing you off to avoid falling down itself.”
Raising ostriches
Ostrich breeding is popular worldwide. But it’s only just catching on in Ukraine, where there are only about 10 farms. “It is basically a waste-free bird, which is good for profitability,” Radchenko said.
Every part of the ostrich can be sold for something. Its feathers and egg shells are used for interior decoration, the skin is used to make consumer goods like bags and the meat is good for eating.
You can purchase almost everything an ostrich is made of at Yasnohorodka: a raw egg for Hr 150, grease for Hr 15 per 100 grams, an egg shell for Hr 70, skin starting from Hr 2,400 and feathers go for up to Hr 100.
A bottle of vodka refined with ostrich egg white goes for Hr 200.
Ready, steady, run! Ostrich jockey Yuriy Batrak and his bird in the middle of a race. (Oleksiy Boyko)
Farming ostriches and eating ostrich meat are yet to become popular among Ukrainians, said Radchenko.
“Ostrich, unlike a pig or a calf, is not so easy to breed in our climate. Moreover, Ukrainians are used to consuming pork, fowl, veal, not ostrich.” Radchenko thinks it would take at least five years to put ostrich meat in a Ukrainian food basket.
A regular ostrich weighs from 63 to 130 kilos and eats plants and insects. The long-legged bird can live up to 70 years, and lay larger eggs than any other living bird – some 1.5 kilos each.
“It may give some 40 eggs per season,” said Serhiy Lokhmachiov, the farm manager. “In wild nature both male and female hatch the eggs, but it takes 42 days of incubation in the farm. If eggs are fertilized, we leave them [for hatching], and if not, we sell them to restaurants.”
| Where: Yasnohorodka village, Makariv region, 30 kilometers from Kyiv. Tickets: Hr 250 on the weekend and Hr 15-25 during the week. When: Sept. 11,12,18,19, 25, 26 at 2:30 p.m. – ostrich races; Sept. 11 at 4:30 p.m. – ethnic music festival; Sept. 18 at 4:30 p.m. – beer festival; Sept. 25 at 4:30 p.m. – dancing festival “Ostrich rhythms”; Sept. 26 at 4:30 p.m. – closing ceremony. Details (in Russian only) are available here. |
Ostrich fun
And, of course, there’s a fun element to raising ostriches. At Yasnohorodka, you can mount an ostrich and take a slow ride yourself for a modest sum of Hr 30.
For the series of September races, organizers prepared plenty of entertainment in addition to the bird run: pig races, an exotic petting zoo, beer, folk music and dancing, as well as kite-flying competitions.
Next year, Radchenko is hoping his farm will host the national ostrich races and even qualify for one of the biggest ostrich shows in the world, the annual Chandler Ostrich Festival in Arizona, U.S.A.
| Ten fun facts about ostriches:
1. It takes an hour to hard-boil an ostrich egg. 2. The egg shells are so hard that it takes a hammer or drill to break them. 3. The birds can’t move backwards and, thus, symbolize forward motion or progress. 4. They were popular entertainment in the arenas of ancient Rome, used to pull chariots and for fighting. A single ostrich kick is so powerful that it could be fatal for humans. 5. They run faster than any bird, 70 kilometers per hour. 6. An ostrich step can be five meters long, its brain is half the size of its eye. 7. They extract liquid from the plants they eat, so they don’t have to drink. 8. Ostrich leather is the strongest available. 9. Ostriches never hide their heads in the sand; rather, they stretch out their necks and put their head to the ground to avoid predators. 10. Ostrich skeletons and fossils date back 120 million years. |
Kyiv Post staff writer Iryna Prymachyk can be reached at [email protected].
