BY KAREN BOSSICK

Alex McCoy fell in love with ostrich meat while training for an Iron Man Triathlon in South Africa.

“When I ate it, I realized how light yet strong I felt compared to when I ate beef,” he said. “I felt so invigorated, and I ran 16 miles faster than I had ever run before.”

The 2001 Sun Valley Community School graduate never forgot it and, when he returned from South Africa where he attended graduate school and worked in international finance, he founded the American Ostrich Farm in the desert between Boise and Kuna.

There, he raises a thousand of the big birds just outside Boise. A single egg makes the size of a 24-chicken egg omelet. And they provide all that lean iron-rich meat and bone broth, as well.

The big birds don’t like winter—they stop laying eggs during wet season, resuming work again as hot dry weather sets in—the hotter, the better.

Eye on Sun Valley visited the farm one very hot day—the video should warm you up if you’re still reeling from Saturday’s below-zero temperatures!