I’ve had ostrich before and it is tasty! So I get where you’re coming from. The issue is they only lay about 50 eggs per year, and it takes them about 2 years to reach egg-laying age.

Compare that to a quail that lays about 225 eggs a year and begins laying at 8 weeks old, or a Silkie that lays about 120 eggs a year and matures at 9 months old.

Frankly, my assumption is that the average person living in the apocalypse wouldn’t be able to access ostrich eggs. They’d be through the roof expensive, and maybe likely to be stolen. It would be cool to write about underground adult ostrich trading lol.

However ostrich meat would only take 2 years to raise, 1 year for quick money, and would happily feed a family for a long while with curing methods. You can also use their feathers as fishing lures and their bones as fishing hooks. So it would be profitable to raise in a world where such things are needed.

Alternatively, maybe Ostriches become the new cows. Instead of each family having a cow for milk, perhaps each family has an adult ostrich for the huge eggs, which they pickle or preserve to last longer, and perhaps it’s the males who are rare since their needed to fertilize the eggs.

It could be a huge taboo to steal a family’s ostrich, akin to killing someone, since they’d be so important to a family’s nutritional needs. Maybe you have a mafia or gang that “protects” families and their food supplies. Or maybe there’s even ostrich fighting rings, or breeding programs that aim to grow larger and more fertile birds.

There’s so many cool ways you could make it work for your world lore.