Head of Robert Kocharyan’s security service Grisha Sarkisyan has a farm in Jrashen village of Ararat Marz, where there are cows, pigs, hens and ostriches. Now there are only four ostriches there. Six ostriches have died due to eating metallic things. In fact the meat, feather and leather of ostrich are very expensive. You can have one dish made of ostrich meat for about 1.000 dollars at restaurants in Moscow. They say that people can buy eggs from this farm by paying about 50-70 dollars for each. They can also buy little ostriches for about 150 dollars, and big ones for about 3.000-4.000 dollars. Ostrich meat is mostly used by people in South Africa.
According to the RA legislation, officers of National Security Service don’t have a right to do business or assist it in any way. Even more, they don’t have a right to be concerned with someone else’s paid work, except in educational and arts field, and this only in case when it doesn’t affect their official duties(except cases when it is connected with their official duties).
People that work here are mostly officers of the National Security Service and soldiers, but it is not clear as to who is responsible for taking care of those ostriches. Grisha Sarkisyan visits this farm only a couple of times a month. Ostrich trade is considered to be an elite business in Armenia because the meat and leather are expensive here. A person that was engaged in this business too told us how people could breed ostriches and make money. For instance, one can buy an ostrich egg for 50 dollars, small ostriches for about 150 dollars each one and the big ones – for about 3-4.000 dollars. People from their village say that one dish made of ostrich meat costs about 1.000 dollars at restaurants in Moscow. You can rarely meet dishes made of ostrich meat in Armenia, because it is difficult to find and buy ostrich meat. Some restaurant managers say that if they make these kinds of dishes their clients will get used to it, and later in case when they can’t find this meat in the market any more, they will lose clients. One kilo of ostrich meat costs about 100-150 dollars. Ostrich feather is more expensive, because this feather-coat is very expensive. Besides that the best fans are made of this feather. For example some European opera singers pay huge money to buy fans made of ostrich feather. “Ostriches are very good birds. And if you take care of them they start to obey you. I keep my ostriches in the yard of our house. I feed them with everything, but mostly I give them mixed fodder and grain, this is their favorite thing. You must be careful with them, because they eat everything: wood, metallic things and so on. They like chalk the most; you must give them chalk so they can grow. They like metallic things very much, and if you are not careful with them they may eat metallic things and die. The most difficult thing with them is to catch them, ostriches run very fast. Sometimes we have to run for several hours to catch them and take them back where they came from. But it is really very interesting to breed ostriches.”