Alpha gal syndrome is a unique food allergy spread by ticks.

AGS causes sensitivity to meet from mammals, resulting in hives, vomiting, or even anaphylaxis.

It's commonly called the red meat allergy, but there is a type of red meat that those with AGS can eat.

Ostrich Mackenzie Spink takes us to an ostrich farm in Danville, where demand is growing for this popular meat alternative to those with alpha Gal syndrome.

When W.D.

King was laid off in 2022, he was looking for a next move that could combine his lifelong cattle experience and his poultry nutrition career.

Brant now partner, asked, hey, what are you going to do?

And say, well, I think I might just raise ostriches.

And started laughing and he looked at me and said, if you're serious, then I'm in.

And months later we bought our first ostriches.

Brant Williams was diagnosed with alpha gal syndrome in 2019, but he says he remembers the first time he ever had a reaction.

Three years before he got a formal diagnosis.

I watched has.

Come up my arms and down my entire body.

Williams has an especially sensitive form of alpha gal syndrome.

Even cooking fumes from red meat on a grill will trigger a reaction.

It's manageable, but it's overwhelming.

In the beginning, it's still overwhelming now, and I'm year 7 or 8, or however many it is.

Williams is also a cattleman by trade, and he knew he wanted to play a part in making life easier for those with alpha gal syndrome.

And I kept thinking that this is something how I can help, because there's more people out there that miss that red meat, not just me.

And that's what really got me thinking about it.

King says raising ostrich is unlike any other livestock he's worked with.

It's the hardest thing I've ever done.

You know, you go into it.

I've got an extensive poultry background and extensive beef background and really thought it was going to fall somewhere between.

But there's just a lot of idiosyncrasies you got to learn.

Digestive.

They actually digest like a horse, their hind gut fermenters.

So they're not a. Cow or they're not a cow or a chicken.

The farm plans to have just a handful of ostriches at the beginning, but this year they hatched over 400 birds.

One reason for the expansion is so their local processor has enough meat to dedicate a whole day just to processing the ostrich.

We need to have enough bulk go through at processing time, so that we can make sure we have of ostrich meat from other red meat.

Although ostriches are birds, they are technically red meat, not poultry.

Importantly, the meat does not have the alpha gal carbohydrate present in mammals.

The primary meat that we're getting is from the legs, so there are a variety of leg steaks as those different muscles go through from the thigh down the leg.

And so the stakes are cut from there.

And then we also offer things like neck roasts.

So that's a great braising cut that you can do.

It's one of my favorite dishes is to braise that and shred it and make tacos out of it.

Part of the business is educating customers on how to cook their ostrich products.

They say when done right, an ostrich steak is almost indecipherable from a beef steak.

Because it is extremely lean cooking it past.

Medium is not recommended.

It's more rare to medium rare.

That 135 temperature is the goal, which can look a little scary to people.

And if they're associating it with poultry, poultry, you must cook much longer than that.

King says ostrich is also a unique financial solution to preserving Kentucky farmland.

For our farming operation, I think it makes us more stable.

That being said, it's not a tremendously large margin, but at least we can say this is what it costs.

Instead of taking the cows to stockyards and getting what someone else says it's worth.

So it's a security for the family.

Security for the farm.

Alpha Roost Farms receives calls and emails every week from customers who say their lives have been changed by its products.

Williams says he got an email this week that moved him.

I've had an ostrich burger.

It's the first time I've had anything similar to beef and five or 6 or 7 years.

He said.

I cried and he said, I can't wait to try a steak and I can't wait to try something else.

And I mean, that made me feel good.

It was very obvious that it was life changing for him.

Alpha Roost Farms originally planned to be a solely online business, but it now has several partnerships with brick and mortar retailers in the state, and its ostrich burgers were available at a concession stand at this year's State Fair for Kentucky edition.

I'm McKenzie Spink.

The National Institute for health found that diagnoses of alpha gal syndrome in America increased over 5,000% from 2005 to 2025.

It also found that racially diverse adults over 40 years old are diagnosed at higher rates.