A Warrior’s Roost: Veteran Raises Ostriches, Tends a Menagerie of Animals at His Ranch

The ostriches on this recent Wednesday morning are being standoffish. They’re hanging out near the back of their pen with no apparent desire to meet some visitors.

Linda the emu is being much more social, wandering about and getting close — but not too close — as she circles around a Gazette photographer.

The ostriches and emus are arguably the stars of the show at Warriors Roost — “a veteran-owned, Southern-driven bird ranch” in Ellicott, east of Colorado Springs. But there is also an immense cast of supporting characters — more than 200 birds, including chickens, geese, peacocks, pheasants, turkeys and guinea fowl.

And there’s also the nonfeathered menagerie, including a horse with scars from a mountain lion attack, three burros, cats and dogs, and Sheila the pig.

Warriors Roost is in the early stages, at least as far as the ostriches. They arrived in June, shipped from Longneck Ostrich Ranch in Kansas. And just recently, Warriors Roost welcomed its first ostrich birth, hatching from an egg suppled by Longneck. But here’s the plan, according to Randy Gales, who runs Warriors Roost with wife Brandy (yes, Randy and Brandy): “In the next 12 to 18 months, we’ll have breeding pairs and meat production. We’ll be selling chicks, fertile eggs and edible eggs, and we’re going to be raising meat birds and sell them as shares.”

But there are still logistics to figure out, Randy acknowledges. There are only three USDA processing plants for ostriches, the closest being in Kuna, Idaho; Randy has been given conflicting information on whether he could have the ostriches processed in a state-approved facility and sell locally.

He’ll also need to work, he says, on targeting the right audience. Ostrich meat is a red meat, like beef. “It’s extremely lean,” he says. “It’s way healthier than beef; there’s zero fat in it.” So perhaps, he says, elite athletes would be interested, or a family with food sensitivities, or an upscale restaurant in Colorado Springs looking to serve something different.

He won’t be the first in the area to give ostrich farming a try. In the early ’90s, he says, the Springs area “was booming with ostriches,” including a large farm just down the road from him.

The Pueblo Chieftain wrote on the boom back then, noting that the number of breeders who were members of the Rocky Mountain Ostrich Association climbed from 20 in 1992 to well over 100 just two years later. But the trend quickly fizzled. By 2000, according to an article by Colorado Community Media on the canceling of the Ostrich Festival in Douglas County, the number of ostrich ranches in the state had dropped to 10.

“When the industry fell in the late 1990s, it fell really hard,” states a history posted by the American Ostrich Association, downed by “many bad actors” and “an industry overload.”

Randy has done his homework and knows that history. “I’m sure Google Chrome is exhausted on my ‘what if’ and ‘how come,’” he says. He has talked for hours with the folks at Longneck Ostrich Ranch. He has talked with people at the processing plants.

“And honestly, everyone said, ‘Don’t do it.’”

But it’s not the first time he has moved forward amid a torrent of naysayers.

Taking in ‘the riffraff’

Randy grew up in Oxnard, Calif. It was far from an idyllic childhood, he says. His parents divorced when he was young. He was raised by his mom, who struggled with drugs and alcohol; he didn’t have a relationship with his dad until much later.

At age 19, determined to do something with his life, he joined the Army.

“As a kid,” he says, “everyone told me I was going to be a loser. The amount of people who told me I was going to fail the Army was unreal. ‘You’re never going to survive.’ So I went out and proved a point; not only did I survive, I survived combat conditions and I survived 20 years.”

He was stationed first at Fort Campbell on the Kentucky- Tennessee border. (He claims the Tennessee side as home and that’s where Brandy is from; their marriage is the second for both of them.) Randy’s final years in the service were at Fort Carson. Over the two decades, he served nine deployments.

He still struggled with the seasonal ups and downs that he had endured as a child, and it was in the Army that he was confirmed as having bipolar disorder — a diagnosis he had rejected in the past. He also would suffer a traumatic brain injury, the result of an encounter with a land mine.

“I can be talking and just lose my train of thought; sometimes it’ll come back, most times it won’t.”

It was leaving the Army in 2019 that almost cost him his life, though.

“Getting out of the Army, man, that really did mess me up,” he says. “That messed me up bad.”

In the Army, there was structure. “Someone tells you when to eat, sleep, go to the bathroom, brush your teeth. Granted, we’re treated like men, but still. ...”

He attempted suicide just 30 days out. But that was also a turning point. “I definitely didn’t want to be a statistic.”

Recovery was slow, though. Eventually, Randy set on a new career path with the help of a VA vocational rehab program and earned his CDL (commercial driver’s license).

In the meantime, Randy and Brandy had their new surroundings to explore; they had moved from Colorado Springs to their 35 acres in Ellicott months before Randy left the Army.

Randy wanted the isolation and quiet of the country.

“The city wasn’t a good fit for me — too many people, too much noise.” Their new place soon “kind of turned into a refuge” as they took in what Randy calls “the riffraff.”

Riffraff such as Sheila the pig, who was destined for slaughter but rescued at auction.

“She was feral as all get out,” Randy says. She was also, it turned out, pregnant and gave birth to six piglets. It was after that, Randy says, that “something clicked” with Sheila, “so the next thing you know she was bringing her piglets around and hanging out with us.”

Then there was the high-energy blue heeler who had spent much of its life in a crate. The German shepherd who had been abused by its owner.

There was also a growing number of birds. Before, “we had some chickens and ducks, just a few little things in town that we could have,” Brandy says. But that flock “expanded quite a bit” after moving to Ellicott.

“We like unique stuff, not just the plain Jane Rhode Island reds. ... I started with regular geese, then I see the curly feathered geese and I got to have those.”

Then, a couple of years ago, they got the emus.

“They’re a lot bigger,” Brandy acknowledges, “but hatching them and raising them from a baby makes it a lot different than just walking up to a big bird. Most people are scared of them. There are some nasty emus on TikTok; they get a bad name.”

But their emus are nothing like the “terrors” you might see on social media, she says. There’s one emu in particular that she’s developed a special bond with.

“Karen is like a puppy with me. She follows me, we walk around the yard, she watches everything I do.”

Emus are big, but ostriches are even bigger, up to 9 feet tall vs. an emu’s 6 feet or so, and weighing up to 300 pounds, twice that of an emu. They’re also generally considered more aggressive. So Brandy was wary of the idea when Randy suggested expanding to ostriches.

But, she acknowledges, “They’re not what I expected.” They’re not as friendly as, say, Karen the emu, but not as skittish as she feared.

As for Randy, his fascination with ostriches goes way back.

“Ever since I saw ‘Swiss Family Robinson,’ the original, there’s a scene where they’re doing a race right before the pirates showed up, and one of the things they were riding was an ostrich. That’s always stuck out for me as a kid.”

Their journey with the ostriches is one he has shared with fans on Facebook with typically hilarious posts. “I hate when I get on Facebook and it’s political bias or anti something; the world’s just got so much drama going on 24/7,” Randy says. His goal: simple human connection, giving someone a chuckle.

“I have gotten lots of responses, like, ‘Hey, man, I was sitting in my house bawling my eyes out, and some reason you popped up, and now this is just the highlight of my day.’ ... A lot of people are like, ‘I probably won’t ever get anything from you, but I definitely will stick around for your posts.’ That’s what I want, it’s not about publicity or followers, it’s how can I brighten someone’s day.”

Reads one post summing up Warriors Roost: “We’re veterans, farmers and professional chaos coordinators, just trying to feed these feathered freeloaders and make the world a little weirder — one ridiculous egg at a time.”

Not all his stories have happy endings, though. There is the tale of “Mangled Mandy.”

“Anytime you transport an animal, there’s always a risk,” Randy says. Mandy arrived with the other ostriches, but was banged up and couldn’t stand; she apparently had been trampled by the others. Randy found a vet in Calhan to do X-rays, which showed nothing broken. They isolated Mandy and at one point she seemed to be doing better, but then died. She’s now buried on their property.

Randy had been prepared to do anything he could for Mandy, even pondering some kind of ostrich wheelchair.

“It was a rough journey,” Randy says. “Although you may be an animal, at the end of the day you’re family.”

‘It’s just a way of life’

While Warriors Roost is a business — Randy established it as an LLC and even brought on his dad, with whom he finally has a relationship, as a business partner — he doesn’t see the farm replacing his day job hauling concrete.

“I’ve definitely thought about that,” he says. But he likes the job and, despite his desire for few neighbors, he’s also “really big on interpersonal relationships and new faces” and worries he wouldn’t get that from overseeing Warriors Roost.

Taking care of those birds on top of his day job does make for long days, he acknowledges. “I may get three, four hours of sleep a night if I’m lucky, and it won’t be solid sleep.”

Brandy also has a day job as food court manager at Army & Air Force Exchange Service. At home, running the incubator and helping take care of all the birds, “It’s just a way of life. It’s not a job, it’s just something I enjoy doing.”

There are frustrations, she acknowledges; Randy might struggle with chores, for example, due to his traumatic brain injury. “Hey, you said you fed today, but did you feed here? ‘Oh no, I didn’t feed there.’ OK, where else did you not feed?”

And while meds help control the bipolar, some days are up, some are down, Randy says. “I still struggle, you know. Even accepting the fact that I am wound differently, and I’m ‘a little extra’ doesn’t necessarily get rid of demons or frustrations.”

But the animals help. “If you ever want to know where your mind is,” he says, “go ahead and talk to a horse. Ostriches are the same.” He thinks the reason the ostriches were standoffish that one day was that his energy was off; they came right to him the next day.

He loves hanging out with the emus, but when he’s having a bad day, they steer clear, “and that breaks my heart. “ There are times, he says, when you want a dog on your lap or a horse to nuzzle you, “or an emu to even stand next to me. ‘Hey, Karen, could you just stand 3 feet from me, maybe let me reach out and pet you.’”

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