Crocodile farm
+Crocodylus Porosus Philippines, Inc., is proud of our proclamation of Conservation through Commercialism in the +Philippines and we are, without reservation, committed to support conservation of crocodiles in the Philippines. Not just the Philippine Crocodile but the Indopacific Crocodile which is also endangered in our country. Both species have an important role in our ecosystems.
The business of ostrich farming
in the Philippines began in the Philippines in 1996. It was started by Lorenzo
U. Limketkai, an engineer, and his son Heintje Limketkai. Heintje Limketkai
took a month-long training course on ostrich farming in Australia. After that
training, the Limketkais established their ostrich farming business and named
it as the Philippine Ostrich and Crocodile Farms, Inc., becoming the first
combined ostrich and crocodile farm in the country.
Their ostrich farm was opened in
Barangay Malanang, Opol, Misamis Oriental in Cagayan de Oro City, Mindanao. They
bought their first three pairs of breeding ostriches from Australia in July
1996. The first ostrich egg that was laid on August 30, 1996, but the hatching
failed. After improvements were made to the facilities and to the egg-handling
techniques, a live ostrich chick hatched for the first time in February 1997.
Afterwards, the Limketkais bought two additional groups of breeding ostriches
from Texas, United States. The business later opened its facilities "to
the public for supervised tours".
The first ostrich, as a product,
was harvested and prepared as meat for fine dining restaurants on December 23,
1997, under the Big Bird Ostrich Meat brand. After that, thirty ostriches were
routinely harvested on a monthly basis for supermarkets and deli shops.
One adult ostrich can provide
around 100 kilos of red meat, which can be sold for 400–500 pesos (US$8–11 as
of January 2014) per kilo. Ostrich eggs, skin and feathers had also been sold
to the market. Ostrich feathers are used to produce feather dusters and as
decorations, while ostrich skin is used to produce leather. Eggs cost 500 pesos
(US$11) apiece, providing to one ostrich farming business an annual income of
50,000 pesos[3] (US$1,100) per adult female, because a mother ostrich can lay
about 100 eggs annually.
After the establishment of the
Philippine Ostrich and Crocodile Farms, Inc., the "first and biggest ostrich
farm in the Philippines", other ostrich farming businesses were later
established in the Philippines, in the regions of Luzon, Visayas, and Mindanao.
These include the Gross Ostrich Farm in Nueva Ecija owned by Michael Gross and
the Davao Crocodile Park (as the name implies, this farm also has a crocodile
farm) in the Davao Region of Mindanao. There is also an ostrich farm in the
village of Sta. Monica in San Luis, Pampanga in Luzon.
The ostrich breeding season in
the Philippines is from February to October. The Department of Agriculture of
the Philippines promoted ostrich farming in response to the world food crisis
of 2007–08, as well as an ecotourism and agritourism project.
