COLUMN ONE : New Fad Is Totally for the Birds : Move over potbellied pigs; ostriches and emus are the new rage. Heck, that pair you bought five years ago for $5,000 could be worth $65,000 today.

LEANDER, Tex. — Call it the Ratite Rage. Call it big-time money, the hottest fad in farmdom.

Ratite? As in flightless birds. We’re talking ostriches and emus here, the former being the largest and dumbest bird in the world; the latter being the similar but slightly smaller national symbol of Australia and not very high on the brainpower scale, either.

But get this: These birds are now being raised in every state in the nation, even in chilly northern climes. They’re being raised in Canada, for that matter. Because, at the moment anyway, they are worth a fortune.

Retirees are investing their life savings in pairs of the birds, hoping for financial security in the coming years. Investors are plowing millions into them and are looking for major returns on their money.

This is not a joke. Does $65,000 for a pair of ostriches sound like a joke? That’s what Texas breeder Gina Davis sold a pair for recently, 18 months after buying them for $25,000. Five years ago, a pair sold for $5,000.

But why the bull market in big, dumb birds?

The answer is that those getting in the business believe they have found two animals, long raised under strict controls in their native habitat, that offer a variety of lucrative and very marketable uses.

The ostrich’s hide has always been valued for leather goods; its feathers for dusters and decoration. But now the meat of the ostrich, which like beef is red but contains only a touch of cholesterol, is being touted by those raising it as the food of the future.

The American Ostrich Assn., a breeder group based in Ft. Worth, touts ostrich as being much more akin to filet mignon than, say, chicken, but with the added benefit of having extremely low fat and cholesterol content.

At the posh Huntington’s restaurant in Dallas, ostrich is one of the hottest sellers, especially as part of the mixed grill and another dish in which it is served with a sun-dried cherry vinaigrette.

The Cuyama Buckhorn Restaurant in New Cuyama, Calif., sells ostrich burgers for $9.95 a pop, fries and salad included.

“It tastes just like beef,” said waitress Denise Muniz.

The meat of the emu is much the same, but it also produces large amounts of oil that is sold in Australia as a remedy for everything from rheumatism to ant bites.

Only a few places, however, are offering ratites on their menus because of the high cost, as well as the fact that almost all the birds are now being used to increase the breeder stock. And that is the market where prices are off the charts.

California ostrich raisers are unaware of any Los Angeles area restaurants serving ratite, but in Sacramento, Mitchell’s Terrace does turn-away business when the birds appear on the menu. “If I run ostrich or emu as a special, consider it gone,” said owner Mitch Miller. “People love it. They’ve heard the scuttlebutt that it’s the meat of the future and they all want to try it.”

Ostrich meat is readily available, said Miller, but very expensive: $40 a pound, which translates to a $30 entree. Miller sears the meat in a skillet and serves it in a red wine and shallot sauce. “You have to cook it rare or medium rare,” he warns. “Go beyond that and it starts tasting like liver.”

The ostrich and emu craze is creating such a frenzy that prices seem to be jumping daily as more and more people want to get in on the ground floor.

Less certain is whether there will be a major downside to the fad. Sooner or later, prices must go down as the bird population goes up. So the question is whether people paying top dollar for their birds will recoup their investment, much less make the fortune that now seems to be there for the taking.

Then too, there is still the question of whether ostriches and emus will go the way of other animals that have made a splash over the years before plummeting in value. These include chinchillas and Shetland ponies in the ‘50s, ferrets in the ‘70s and, most recently, potbellied pigs.

Dr. Jim Jensen, who heads the zoological medicine program at Texas A&M; University, said a pregnant potbellied pig that sold for $10,000 three years ago now costs about $300.

“The novel animal industry tends to fall apart because the prices zoom, just shoot up exponentially, then flare out,” he said.

But for now, talk is all on the upside. Here in Leander, emu rancher Jody Giddens estimates that there are 20 to 30 breeders within a 30-mile radius of his place, with more coming on board all the time.

“The market is going crazy,” said Waymon Gilbert, who lives down the road from Giddens and is himself a recent entrant in the ratite craze. “The demand right now is so strong you can get $10,000 for a pair of emus that aren’t even a year old.”

Breeders are even taking deposits on chicks that might not be delivered for several years.

As Gina Davis, the Spearman, Tex., breeder put it: “It is unbelievable. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. You can buy a pair of birds or you can buy a house, or a Mercedes or put your kid through four years of college.”

There are even ratite rustlers roving the range. Where there’s money, there’s crooks.

Giddens still fumes about the fact that thieves made off with 55 of his emu chicks, valued at $200,000, last August, even though by a good deal of luck he got 42 of them back.

“There’s still 13 of them out there, and I’m going to find them,” said Giddens, whose family has been ranching this Hill Country region for generations.

Not so lucky were Joe and Mona Hardin of Humble, Tex., who woke up one morning last September and found 11 of their 12 emus stolen.

“I just sat down and cried,” said Mona Hardin, who has spent much of her time since the theft alerting brokers and auctioneers to be on the lookout for her birds. Like most ratite owners, the Hardins had identifying microchips embedded in the birds’ necks.

C.B. Wiley, a Texas detective specializing in exotic animals, estimates that 460 ratites valued at $1.6 million have been stolen since the first reported theft little more than a year ago.

“These are bold people,” said Wiley. “I’ve seen times when they cut through seven fences to get to the birds.”

Another measure of the ratite craze can be found in the circulation of the Ostrich News, at one time a four-page newsletter that in 1988 had 100 or so subscribers. Today it is fat with ads, has a circulation of 5,500 and is distributed to addresses in every state and 35 countries.

“The growth is nationwide,” said editor Melody Crawford. “It meets the needs of the farmers, the ranchers and the small homesteaders. The question of the hour is how long this breeder market is going to last.”

No one knows for sure, just as no one has a real handle on how many ostriches and emus are out there. Garry Mauro, the Texas Lands commissioner, said recently that he was astonished to see so many ratites while traveling the back roads of the state.

“It seemed like there was an emu just about every place you looked,” he said.

The reason for the uncertainty is that the numbers are growing at such a rapid rate. Emus, for instance, can lay more than 40 eggs a year, while ostriches average between 30 and 50 during a season. One estimate by the American Emu Assn. is that there are about 55,000 of those ratites in the country--which is a lot, but still minuscule compared to the 6.5 billion chickens marketed in the United States last year.

Experts say it will be years from now before the ratite population is large enough to begin slaughtering them for mass consumption. Emus will probably reach that stage first because they have proven to be easier to raise and start-up costs are considerably less than those for ostriches.

Raising both animals is nothing new on their indigenous continents. Emus have been raised in Australian cooperatives for years. The birds, which stand about six feet and weigh 150 pounds when fully grown, have long been used by Australian aborigines not only as a food source, but also as a remedy for aches and pains. People seeking pain relief wrap themselves in the skin of a freshly killed emu and the oil from the bird then penetrates the skin.

The ostrich industry has been tightly controlled in South Africa for many years, with a small group of breeders determining how many of the birds would be raised and slaughtered. The export of the birds to other countries was banned. But when strict trade sanctions against South Africa were imposed in 1986, American ranchers--as well as opportunists in such diverse places as Israel and Britain--recognized there was money to be made by raising the birds.

Some of the original U.S. stock was smuggled out of South Africa. Only last year, U.S. Customs agents seized 300 ostrich eggs, five full-grown birds and five chicks that were smuggled from South Africa to Mexico and then into the United States. Others were imported from states adjacent to South Africa or raised by exotic breeders in this country. Since ostrich-raising began to be taken seriously, the demand has gone through the roof.

This, however, is not the first time there has been an ostrich craze. During the late 1800s, ostrich plumes were all the rage in Europe and the United States. As a result, vast numbers of the birds were slaughtered--to a point where they all but disappeared from Africa and Asia.

As popular as ratite raising is today, it is not without its drawbacks.

For one, ostriches can be mean and unpredictable, not great qualities for an eight-foot-tall, 350-pound animal that can outrun a dog and open up its keeper’s chest with its large, sharp claw. As noted previously, the birds are also quite stupid and have been known to kill themselves by eating too much wire fencing.

Perhaps the first word on ostriches came from the Book of Job, which said: “God hath deprived her of wisdom, neither hath He imparted to her understanding.”

Just outside the Hill Country town of Burnet, Jim Luther and Sissy Miller are partners in the ostrich and emu raising business. Both victims of Texas’ banking and real estate disaster, they are perhaps typical of the investors getting in the business--people with a little land looking for the biggest return on the dollar.

“We looked at the numbers and what the best- and worst-case scenario would be,” said Miller. “Then we compared those numbers to other things and decided this was the best thing we could do.”

From a cautious beginning in 1989, the two now have eight ostriches and 40 emus, selling several hundred ostrich and emu chicks along the way to pay for new pens and barns on the 200-acre L&M; Ranch. Miller said she and Luther agreed from the beginning they would not go into debt.

“It’s the easiest thing I’ve ever done,” said Miller. “I feel almost guilty doing it.”

But from Miller there are also words of caution, talk of how the con artists are already at work, taking advantage of the growing number of people trying to get into the business, selling birds that are too young to lay eggs or selling birds that are not their own.

“Everyone’s so hot to get in this business that it’s happening more and more,” she said. “People are just so excited about it, they are getting ripped off.”

Times researcher Lianne Hart contributed to this story.