Australia/Pakistan/Russia

Ostrich news February 10-16

AUSTRALIA

Here’s a fun headline:

Leo Jensen @jensen_leo

Sex work meets dinosaur farm: Australia's last ostrich farm theage.com.au/national/victo… via @theage

theage.com.auSex work meets dinosaur farm: Australia’s last ostrich farmOften confused with emu, ostrich meat is sustainable, delicious and nutritious. But Michael Hastings is the country’s last standing ostrich farmer and is struggling to keep up with demand.

The article it belongs to is about Australia’s only commercial ostrich farmer, who is not the titular sex worker. Those would be the male ostriches on his farm, who are currently in the middle of breeding season (they’re also the titular dinosaurs) and apparently hard at work. Michael Hastings, ostrich pimp/dinosaur farmer, told The Age that he does most of his business in exports but he’s recently focused on domestic sales, selling eggs and meat to local restaurants and markets. Hastings says the country’s drought has made ostriches more expensive to raise, so diversifying his customer base makes for a nice “insurance plan.” (Faithful readers of Ostrich Weekly will recall that farmers in South Africa are having similar issues.) Hastings says the locals are beginning to acquire a taste for ostrich meat, while the eggs serve as Instagram-friendly novelties.

PAKISTAN

The Express Tribune @etribune

Ostrich meat has a lot iron, is more nutritious than beef or mutton and known to lower cholesterol levels tribune.com.pk/story/1907283/1

Efforts to farm ostriches in Pakistan aren’t going so well — or at least not as well as they could — because the government isn’t helping farmers. The Express Tribune thinks the government should give farmers subsidies and raise public awareness of ostrich meat. They hope that will both make the meat more popular and inform Muslims that their religion does not forbid its consumption, which apparently is a common misconception. If nothing else, Pakistani ostrich farmers have The Express Tribune on their side: The newspaper is apparently a big fan of our favorite bird, calling it “supermodels of bird species” and writing six years ago that ostrich farming “has the power to feed the world.”

RUSSIA

Time to check in on ostrich leather lover Paul Manafort, who surely is living up to the terms of his plea agreement in an effort to put all of this behind him and pay his debt to soci — oh come on.

NBC News @NBCNews

Judge says Paul Manafort gave false statements to investigators to protect a Russian conspirator

nbcnews.toJudge says Paul Manafort gave false statements to protect a Russian conspiratorHis attempts to shield a Russian conspirator “gives rise to legitimate questions about where his loyalties lie,” the judge said.

Well, it looks like Manafort, who once owned a $15,000 ostrich leather jacket that is probably sitting in an evidence room, will be going to jail for an even longer time than he expected. Because a judge found that he lied to the Office of Special Counsel, that office is now recommending he be sentenced to 19 to 24 years in prison — almost certainly a death sentence for a man who turning 70 this April and claims to be in poor health already. Judge Amy Berman Jackson believes Manafort lied to protect his co-conspirator, alleged Russian spy Konstantin Kilimnik. Manafort is also awaiting sentence in a separate case in Virginia.

OSTRICH MULTIMEDIA OF THE WEEK

Someone decided to make a giant bowl of ramen. A giant bowl of ramen needs a giant egg (you can find a shorter version of this on Facebook, which doesn’t let me embed videos so I had to use this one).