BMIOA Founders

Daryl & Donna Holle
Colorado, USA

Fiona Benson
England

BMIOA Founding Members

The following Founding Members joined together in June/July 2001 to help BMIOA establish Standards, Classifications, Procedures, and Methods to enable BMIOA to function as a well-organized commercial association whereby all members have common goals and concepts towards a viable Ostrich industry.

In Alphabetical Order:

Peter Empedocles
Greece

Bill Spainhoward
Kentucky, USA

Stan Stewart
United Kingdom

Narrative on Daryl & Donna Holle
Colorado, USA

Animal Nutrition is not anything new to Daryl Holle, President of Blue Mountain Feeds, Inc. He started, with his father as the tutor, developing balanced feed rations for his livestock projects when he was growing up on a northeast Kansas farm. These livestock projects included poultry, beef cattle, hogs, pheasants, and quail. He began intensifying his study of nutrition, at an early age, in order to help his brother increase production on a large poultry operation of 4000 laying hens. After that, Daryl went to work for IBM as a technical troubleshooter flying all over the United States solving various problems. In 1979, Daryl returned to the farm life that he had missed and bought a dairy farm of 600 milking cows. Using the computer skills Daryl learned at IBM, combined with his previous background in nutrition, he become very proficient at nutrition and feed formulation. He experimented with new ideas and concepts constantly. Other farmers noticed his work and began asking Daryl to do their nutritional consulting and a whole new business began. In 1991, Daryl sold the dairy farm because the nutritional consulting business had become almost full time.

Today, Daryl still does some dairy cattle nutritional work and some contract nutritional work for a large vitamin and mineral premix company. But his new love is Ostrich nutrition.
 
He formulated Blue Mountain Ostrich Feeds in 1991 after purchasing Ostriches and was unable to find feed that he felt would work well enough to be a high-potency, performance feed. "These birds respond more to good nutrition than any animal I have ever worked with and that makes it fun," says Daryl.

Blue Mountain Ostrich Feed began interstate distribution in 1992 after friends and neighbors began asking Daryl for his feed and the demand just kept growing. The Blue Mountain feed is currently being distributed in many U.S. States and in 1998 began international distribution overseas.

One of Daryl's main objectives is to educate farmers about feed--specifically the feedstuffs, minerals and vitamins and how they all must work together. Daryl has been traveling extensively throughout the region speaking at local community meetings, seminars and workshops in an effort to help people become knowledgeable about the details of feed. He has also taken many field trips to help solve various bird nutritional problems that farmers are experiencing.

In addition to managing his company, Blue Mountain Feeds, Inc., Daryl keeps busy assisting others who have trademarked license agreements for processing and marketing Blue Mountain Ostrich Meats, Blue Mountain Ostrich Leather, Blue Mountain Ostrich Oil and Blue Mountain Feeds International. Daryl's accumlated experience in all these Ostrich product areas led him to design cost effective and productive concepts that will allow the Ostrich industry to be a viable industry. He also spent 9 months full-time at a processing plant to fully understand the differences in Ostrich and what makes those differences, then designed a plan to solve those differences.

Donna Holle has been instrumental in marketing Blue Mountain Ostrich Meat, Blue Mountain Ostrich Leather and Blue Mountain Ostrich Oil products in the Colorado region and over the internet for several years. She understands clearly what the consumer wants and demands in Ostrich products. Donna has also worked intensely with farmers on their feeding programs in the United States to make sure they have the right ingredients for their Blue Mountain feed formulas to ensure good production and quality birds.

Daryl and his wife, Donna, have been farming Ostriches for a number of years and will continue to do so in order to fully understand and help achieve the industry goals of the future.

Narrative on Fiona Benson
England

Fiona Benson grew up in the United Kingdom, the daughter of Rex Paterson OBE who had the largest dairy farming enterprise in the country for several decades. He was a pioneer of modern dairy farming practices. In his words Rex "was never afraid to question the reasons for commonly accepted practices. We would find ways of measuring everything which occurred. As our business developed, we found that many things in farming followed unexpected, but clearly defined patterns. This particularly related to the influence of men and feeds on milk yields." Fiona has inherited that questioning approach.

She spent 10 years running her own dairy farm As a result of divorce she left agriculture and became involved in development of computer- based management accounting systems. This experience has also proved invaluable in assisting in extracting information and interpreting that information.

In 1994, now living in Cape Town, South Africa she became interested in the Ostrich Industry and ostrich meat in particular. She and her husband Richard recognised that Ostrich Meat would become a major meat for informed consumers as a result of its quality and particularly the health benefits.

Very quickly they learnt that very little was known about the meat and production levels on farm were exceedingly low. They purchased a smallholding and by the end of 1995 had their first Ostriches to help understand where the problems lay.

It became clear very quickly that there were a combination of factors - nutrition, farming practices and the monopoly situation that had controlled the industry till the end of 1993 being the most significant.

In the latter part of 1996 Fiona started to use the Internet as one method of gathering information. At the end of 1996 a major incident resulted in a temporary ban of SA Ostrich Meat to Europe. At the First Ostrich Meat Congress, held in Oudtshoorn in February, 1997 Fiona heard for the first time a plea from those marketing Ostrich Meat. The message was sent to the industry to please overcome the inconsistencies in colour, taste, aroma etc. in the meat being produced.

At the same time, through the Internet, Fiona became aware of Daryl Holle sending out the same message. This led to communication that made it clear to Fiona that Daryl Holle was providing solutions. It was clear he had studied the birds intensely and understood them well. Blue Mountain International was established as a mechanism to enable this expertise to be available to producers outside the US.

In June 2000, Fiona and Richard moved to Blue Mountain Ostrich Farm to enable expansion of the farming operation.

As a member of NOPSA and The BDOA she has attended meetings of the IOA and taken part in Strategic Analysis Sessions of both the SA Industry and the Global Industry.

Visiting, listening to and observing the problems of the processors, working directly with the consumers of our end products, and having the opportunity to visit many farms - large and small both within South Africa and overseas - has provided the opportunity to verify many things.

She remains committed to assisting producers achieve their objectives of producing Quality products - Cost Effectively.

Narrative on Peter Empedocles
Greece

Peter Empedocles saw ostrich rearing as a chance to make a living away from the city of Athens. Three years ago he bought two trios from a Greek company which had plans to set up satellite farms, an ostrich slaughterhouse etc, he then tried to help the said company to stay on the market. In so doing he worked on the various projects and met with Fiona Benson who had also offered to help by offering advice on almost all relevant subjects. The project, although well thought out, failed due to lack of financial backing.
 
Fiona Benson and Daryl Holle became his main source of knowledge concerning the ostrich industry. Alot of experience has been gained by visiting farms and discussing problems with other farmers. When intensive road works started close to his farm he sold his livestock and now participates with a friend's farm, while concentrating on meat sales.

At first working with meat imported from Holland, he now works with locally produced meat, buying whole legs which he processes and distributes packaged to butchers and restaurants mainly in the Athens area. There go any plans to get away from the city...!

Narrative on Bill Spainhoward
Kentucky, USA

Bill Spainhoward has an extensive background with animal genetics. He was born and raised on a farm and for the past 30 years, he has owned and studied genetics of differing animals starting with rabbits. Even though he went to only semi-local shows and never left a 3 State region with them, he placed 16th in the US showing rabbits and 1st in the State of Kentucky with many registered Grand Champions. They were bred mainly for fur color and markings.
 
He then moved to exotic birds (especially exotic pheasants) including quail and then on to ostriches. He bought his first group of ostriches from 4 different farmers in 1995 and, after 2 years of buying, had a total of 16 different bloodlines to use for his gene pool. Ostriches at that time were extremely expensive so it was difficult to obtain enough really high quality birds. Farmers didn't cull their breeders very well during that time because every live bird was worth a lot of money. Using these 16 lines, Bill crossed them in different directions and saved only the largest, fastest growing offspring. From there, he went for high egg production from those fastest growing birds. It is nearly impossible to develop 2 traits at one time so, he worked on size first and then production. He developed a partnership with a farmer and thus increased the gene pool to choose from and also helped with the huge expense of rearing several hundred birds.

He has now developed a line of large, fast growing, high production Ostriches but has become disabled and has had to reduce his farming operation. He keeps only the best and has turned most of his operation over to his Son who does the labor involved.

During these years with animals, it was recognized early that the only way to actually know what genetics are present was to have a top line feed. He developed a feed for his rabbits and birds that was far superior to anything off the shelf. It was learned that there was very little information available concerning nutritional needs of ostriches. During his feed studies and attempts to develop an ostrich feed, he met Daryl Holle owner of Blue Mountain Feeds and became involved with an internet chat list to help newcomers to the industry in all aspects of ostrich farming. This relationship has now continued to include the Blue Mountain International Ostrich Asociation, also established to further our industry by setting standards for ostrich production.

Narrative on Stan Stewart
United Kingdom

Stan Stewart has been farming ostrich in Devon, England since 1994. He is the current chairman of the British Domesticated Ostrich Association having just been re-elected to serve for a further year.

Stan was brought up on a small mixed farm in Northern Ireland but joined the Royal Air Force from school 'to see the world'. Starting his service life as a photographer he was then selected for aircrew duties and was eventually commissioned as an Air Electronics Officer. He saw service in many parts of the world and had tours flying on Canberra, Nimrod and Vulcan aircraft. The management experience gained during his service career was very much appreciated in his new career as an ostrich farmer.

From the beginning, Stan's aim was to rear and sell meat producing birds, so to this end purchased five trios of Zimbabwe Blues as his first breeding stock - this flock has now expanded to some 30 trios. During this time he has gained a vast amount of experience in most aspects of the industry from rearing chicks to operating one of the few licensed slaughter units in the United kingdom.

Stan has been active on both the domestic and international ostrich scene including exporting birds to countries as diverse as Moldavia and Jamacia. He is now retiring from active farming to concentrate on promoting and furthering the genetic development of the ostrich throughout the world.

Last modified on Thursday, October 05, 2006