Pie-In-Sky Emu Venture Leaves Many With Bitter Taste -- Bottom Falls Out Of Market For Exotic Birds

COLLEYVILLE, Texas - This is how insane the emu market was a few years back, just before the Vinson family got into the business of raising flightless birds:

An unhatched chick could fetch up to $4,000. Mature breeders were being insured at more than $50,000 a pair. Microchips had to be embedded under each animal's skin to guard against rustlers. And boosters seemed to be at every livestock show in the nation touting the lean red flesh of this ostrichlike creature as "the meat of the future."

This is how insane the market is today, now that the novelty has worn off and America still favors a nicely marbled sirloin:

Thousands of emus are roaming the Texas countryside, set loose by ranchers unwilling to spend another dime on feed. Hundreds of others have been allowed to starve to death, their emaciated remains found in breeding pens that once drew eager investors.

And the Vinsons? They became a symbol of the industry's frustration after police caught them "euthanizing" their worthless flock - with an aluminum baseball bat.

Two physician brothers

It happened here in Colleyville, a rural suburb of Fort Worth, where two physician brothers, Stephen Vinson and Russell Vinson II, housed more than 100 emus in their father's back yard. What looked like a lucrative venture had quickly become a money pit, costing the family thousands of dollars a year just to keep the gangly, 5-foot-tall, 100-pound birds alive. They tried to sell them, to give them away, to get a slaughterhouse to pick them up.

"Nobody wanted them," said the Vinsons' lawyer, Bill Magnussen. "So they tried to do away with them in the most humane way possible."

That entailed heading out one fine June morning with an Easton "Big Barrel" slugger and whacking the birds over the head. Stephen Vinson, a 43-year-old emergency-room doctor, allegedly did most of the swinging. Feathers flew. Blood splattered. The emus shook and stumbled and vomited. They were dragged to a trailer and dumped in a pile. By the time a horrified neighbor summoned police, 22 carcasses were ready for disposal.

"The emu's a great bird," said Don Feare, a Fort Worth attorney who lobbied, unsuccessfully, to get the Vinsons prosecuted for animal cruelty. "It's the idiots who own them that are the problem."

These are ugly days for the emu industry, roused from a decade of champagne wishes and caviar dreams to face the morning-after. Instead of giving beef a run for its money, the bird has sucked dry most ranchers who have touched one, an expensive lesson in the fine line between a visionary and a fool.

Nation's emu capital

In Texas, the emu capital of America with roughly a quarter of the nation's emu breeders, membership in the state association has dropped from a peak of 2,700 to 320. The Ratite Marketplace - a national trade magazine catering to devotees of the emu, ostrich and rhea - has shrunk from 350 pages to fewer than 50. As with many other animal fads, hope ultimately revealed itself as hype, leaving behind a mess of unwanted birds, squandered pensions, civil lawsuits, even criminal indictments.

Industry leaders are convinced that emus still have a bright future, albeit more distant than they had first imagined. They view the shakedown of the last year or so as a natural, although indisputably painful, correction in the market - a process that is weeding out get-rich-quick schemers and finally allowing true believers to get down to work.

A staple of life for centuries among aborigines of the Australian outback, the emu was originally imported in the 1930s and '40s as breeding stock for U.S. zoos. By the '80s, the descendants of those low-fat birds had become a fixture at exotic livestock auctions across the country, triggering an investment craze perfectly suited to a nation obsessed with diet and health.

With its cattle-raising traditions, Texas took the early lead in building up the domestic emu population, which now numbers about 1 million, according to the Dallas-based American Emu Association. Other states soon followed suit, but both the industry's highs and the lows have been amplified here, largely due to the concentration of ranchers and birds.

Emu officials describe that initial frenzy as the "breeders market," which is to say that demand for the birds was generated by capitalists rather than consumers. As long as more ranchers kept wanting in on the action, there was no limit to the prices - up to $60,000 a pair. And even at those inflated rates, the birds seemed like a bargain. If one pair of breeders could kick out 20 chicks, you could double your money in the first year.

"Everyone wanted to believe the stories that were being told," said Tom Thomason, president of the Texas Emu Association. "People got caught up in the hype."

Once a consumer market had been developed - as in emu steaks on the barbie - everyone knew the prices would have to decline. You can't very well be making hamburger out of a bird worth more than a Ferrari. Still, most thought the drop would be gradual, offset by the revenue of the slaughter. "Unfortunately," Thomason said, "that transition came a lot quicker than any of us were prepared to deal with."

Not only did it come quickly, but when it came, there was no consumer market to speak of. A handful of restaurants and specialty stores do offer the meat, but so far it has proved too expensive and exotic for mainstream American tastes.

To prevent waste, meat has been donated to prisons and homeless shelters.

Gary Nassiff is a marketer, and he represents what many believe will be the industry's salvation. He sells a line of products made with emu oil. An ancient aboriginal remedy, it is rendered from a fatty sack on the animal's back, producing a soothing natural balm.

"I personally think it puts aloe vera to shame," said Nassiff, whose Denton, Texas-based company, Triad Promotions, makes 17 soaps and lotions, including Rhemu, an analgesic cream available in 2,800 Eckerd drug stores.

The oil is said to be good for sore joints and chafing skin. New York designer Donna Karan reportedly uses it in her cosmetics. Some NBA trainers rub it on the aching knees of their stars. "It even has a potential for helping hair grow back," said Nassiff.

One problem: Nassiff gets most of his emu oil from Australia. "We need good oil, guaranteed," he said. "American farmers have been slow getting to that point."

For skeptics, ranging from animal-rights activists to belly-up ranchers, the whole emu thing is starting to smell pretty rotten. "It was a typical pyramid scheme," said Linda Yarbrough, who works with the Texas Establishment for Animal Rights.

As she and others like to point out, the only way anyone made money in the business was by passing the birds from one rancher to another. Indeed, it was not in the industry's short-term interest to even think about moving to a consumer market, not as long as the goose could still lay the golden egg for new investors.

"There was no end user, no end product, but the people selling these birds were not telling that to the idiots buying them," said Feare, the Fort Worth attorney, who operates his own wild fowl refuge.