Ostrich farm

“ Any dirty water or refuse which is thrown away at all is flung just outside the kitchen door, where it lies in unsightly heaps and pools, attracting myriads of flies; a plentiful sprinkling of which, needless to state, find their way, in a drowned, boiled, baked, roast or fried condition, into every article of food sent to table. Occasionally a teaspoon is tossed out among the rubbish, and lies glittering in the sunshine, ready to tempt the first ostrich that happens to prowl past the door. ”

“ They want plenty of space, good food—but not too much of it—and must be driven to shelter from severe storms. A very small fence will keep them in bounds, and they will thrive on a soil altogether too barren for cattle or sheep. A great deal of land formerly regarded as worthless is now found highly profitable as a home for the ostrich herds."
"Now, Fred," said the Doctor, "take a scrap of paper and figure up the profits of an ostrich farm." Fred prepared himself with materials for calculation, and the results caused his eyes to open with astonishment. ”

“ In the early days of ostrich-farming splendid fortunes were made. Then, feathers were worth £100 per lb., the plumes of one bird at a single plucking realizing on an average £25. For a good pair of breeding-birds £400, or even £500, was no uncommon price; and little chicks, only just out of the egg, were worth £10 each. Indeed, the unhatched eggs have sometimes been valued at the same amount. But, since the supply has become so much greater than the demand, things are sadly changed for the farmers ”

“ Then at last, one day, when you come to turn the eggs in the finisher, where they are placed for the last fortnight, you find one with a hole in it—generally a three-cornered piece is knocked clean out—and in the opening a pinkish, soft-looking bill is making impatient movements, and a bright eye is peeping at you as knowingly as though already well acquainted with all the ways of a world on which its owner has yet to enter. An ostrich, by the way, seems far more intelligent as a baby than he ever is in after life. ”

“ Ostriches, when very firmly bent on escaping, and finding no gate open, will sometimes charge the fence; and, though occasionally one will succeed in tumbling safely over and getting away, the clumsy performance most frequently results in broken legs.
Runaway birds are far from being the least among the many trials of an ostrich-farmer's life; and the annual losses caused by them even exceed in number those resulting from accident. ”

“ When, either by natural or artificial means, the little ostriches are safely brought into the world, the farmer's next anxiety is to keep them there. They do well enough on the coast; but in the Karroo they are most difficult to rear, and our experience with them has been sad and disheartening. Numbers of them die, when about a month or five weeks old, from an epidemic which comes and goes in the strangest manner. During a whole season, for instance, one farmer will lose nearly every chick; while brood after brood will be successfully reared by another at no very great distance. ”

“ Andrew Rivers, being a man of progressive and independent mind, cast about him in a state of uncertainty for some years, devoting himself chiefly to hunting, until the value of ostrich feathers had induced far-sighted men to domesticate the giant bird, and take to “farming” ostriches—incubating them by artificial as well as natural means. Then Rivers became an ostrich-farmer. He was joined in this enterprise by Jerry Goldboy, and the two ultimately bought a farm on the karroo and settled down. ”

“ Ostrich plumes vary in price, from ten to one hundred and fifty dollars a pound, so you see it is worth money to the ostrich farmer, not only to have good birds, but to keep them in the best condition, for the better the bird the better the product.
“It costs about ten dollars a year to keep a bird; that is, to feed it. The ostrich farm at Pasadena is one of the show places there, and thousands of tourists visit it every year. Another good feature of the ostrich is that he lasts so long. ”

“ At the present time an ostrich farm is in progress in California; it is as yet a very young institution, and its [5] success is being watched with interest, but, in my opinion, while the bird will live and thrive, the quality of the plumage will be very inferior to those in their native clime. ”

“ Of desert vegetation they seem to prefer a plant somewhat resembling a pumpkin, which creeps on the ground. On this they are fed chiefly at the ostrich farm, but, of course, an ostrich will eat almost anything, and I fancy their diet is not a matter needing much care and forethought. It is a curious fact that ostrich feathers are nearly as expensive in the French Soudan as they are in England. ”

“ A mile from Gauba is the Government ostrich farm. The farm is managed by a European—who was unfortunately absent when I was there—and contains about forty birds. These have been caught young by natives and are kept with a view to breeding. The ostriches give two crops of feathers annually, in January and June. At present the farm is only in an experimental state, but it is hoped in time to produce a large quantity of feathers from the place. The manager was then on a tour down the Niger in order to try to find a more suitable site for the farm. ”

“ The sight of nests thus apparently deserted has probably given rise to the erroneous idea that the ostrich leaves her eggs to hatch in the sun. The passage in the book of Job: "Which leaveth her eggs in the earth, and warmeth them in the dust," is also generally supposed to point to the same conclusion, though in reality there can be no doubt that the latter part of the sentence simply applies to the warming of the eggs by the heat of the bird's body as she sits over them in her dusty nest. Stupid though she is, she has more sense than to believe in the possibility of the sun hatching her eggs ”

“ Farther on in the journey an ostrich, escaped from a farm, stalks over the plain, and, approaching to within several yards of the train, jogs along for many miles, and perchance wheedles the engineer into impromptu races. Hardly has the bird disappeared when on the wide veldt a herd of buck galloping with their long heads down, or a large number of wildebeest, plunging and jumping like animated hobby-horses, raise clouds of dust as they dash away from the monster of iron and steam. ”

“ The bare idea of there being anything pathetic about an ostrich seems absurd—and indeed this is the only instance I have known of anything of the kind—but it was truly pitiful to watch this poor bird, as, day after day, and nearly all day long, he wandered up and down, up and down, the length of his camp, in the hard, beaten track worn by his restless feet along the side of the fence. ”

“ This is expensive work—especially when, as in our case, the hard rock has to be blown away by dynamite; a party of navvies, encamped on the farm for weeks, progressing but slowly and laboriously at the rate of about one foot per day, for which the payment is £5 a foot; but the advantage is seen during the protracted droughts. Then, on farms which only possess dams, the ostriches and other stock are seen lying dead in all directions, a most melancholy sight. Where there is a well, however, the animals can always be kept alive. ”

“ Sometimes the white feathers would be dirty—for there is nothing an ostrich likes better than sitting down to cool himself in the muddiest dam he can find—then it was necessary to wash them, dip them into strong raw starch, and shake them in the hot sun, beating two bundles of them together till quite dry. The starch makes them look very pretty and fluffy; and young ladies in England who economically wash their own feathers would find it a great improvement. Ostrich-feathers are quite tabooed by ladies in South Africa ”

“ The bird has a fresh crop of feathers every year, and as the prime feathers are very valuable, it may easily be believed that a lucky breeder finds the occupation a very profitable one.
The prettiest sight to see on an ostrich farm is the nursery, where, in a large room, in inclement weather, a score or more of little chicks are attended by a black boy, whom they follow everywhere. ”

“ A great fondness for and sympathy with animals is not the least among the many tastes which T—— and I have in common; and in our up-country home, far off as we were from human neighbours, we were always surrounded by numbers of animal and bird friends.
We began to form the nucleus of our small menagerie while still at Walmer; and one of our first acquisitions was a secretary bird. The friends near whom we lived possessed three of these creatures, which had all been found, infants together, in one nest on an ostrich farm near Port Elizabeth ”

“ The hen ostrich lays every alternate day; and if, for each egg laid, one is taken from the nest, she will continue laying until she has produced from twenty to thirty. One, which belonged to T——, laid sixty eggs without intermission. If no eggs are taken away, the hen leaves off laying as soon as she has from fifteen to twenty; the latter being the greatest number that can be satisfactorily covered by the birds. The surplus eggs are placed in incubators. It is best not to give much artificial food to the birds while sitting ”

“ Ostrich-farming is no child’s play. It involves risk in more ways than one, and sometimes taxes both the courage and strength of the farmer.
In ordinary circumstances the ostrich is a mild, inoffensive creature—indeed the female is always so; but when a male ostrich is what I may style nesting—when, enclosed in a large field or paddock, he guards his wives and his eggs—no lion of the desert, no tiger of the jungle or kloof, is more ferocious or more savagely bent on the death of any or all who dare to intrude on his domain. ”

“ It is a strange fact that the most savage ostrich, if he comes up and finds you between himself and his nest, does not, as would naturally be supposed, rush to defend his eggs, and, if possible, kick you to death, but is instantly changed into the most abjectly submissive of creatures. ”

“ T HERE is some prospect of ostrich farming developing into quite an industry in the southwest, and it will sometime be a cold day when the simple-minded rustic of that region will not have ostrich on toast if he wants it. Ostrich farming, however, will always have its drawbacks. The hen ostrich is not a good layer as a rule, only laying two eggs per annum, which, being about the size of a porcelain wash bowl, make her so proud that she takes the balance of the year for the purpose of convalescing. ”

“ Although, within the wide circle enclosed by our wire fence, we were not leaving many of our human fellow-creatures, there were plenty of good-byes to be said; for those who live on these out-of-the-way farms come to be on very intimate and familiar terms with their live stock, and all our creatures—even the fowls, and those tamer members of our large family of ostriches which for years had been daily looking inquiringly in at our windows, and picking and stealing round the kitchen door—were old friends, from whom we were sorry to part. ”

“ Thus, during a morning's walk through the camps, you may be escorted in succession by four or five vicious birds, all determined to have your life if possible, yet held completely in check by a few mimosa thorns.
When an ostrich challenges he sits down; and, flapping each broad wing alternately, inflates his neck, and throws his head back, rolling it from side to side, and with each roll striking the back of his head against his bony body with so sharp and resounding a blow that a severe headache seems likely to be the result. ”

“ Altogether, ostriches are queer-looking creatures; they are so awkward, so out of proportion, and everything about them, with the exception of their plumage and their big, soft, dark eyes, is so quaintly ugly as to suggest the idea that they have only by some mistake survived the Deluge, and that they would be more in their right place embedded in the fossiliferous strata of the earth than running about on its surface. And how they do run! Only startle an ostrich ”

“ And, indeed, no one looking at the ostrich's ridiculous little head, so flat immediately above the eyes as to leave no room for any brain, can wonder that he is an imbecile; possessing even less intelligence than a common fowl, and not recognizing the man who has fed him every day for years, if the latter comes to the camp in a coat or hat to which he is unaccustomed. ”

“ For it sometimes happens that land on which ostriches have run for years becomes at last unhealthy for the birds. We were in that part of the Karroo which is called the Zwart Ruggens, or "black rugged country;" so named from the appearance it presents when, during the frequent long droughts, the bush loses all its verdure, and becomes outwardly so black and dry-looking that no one unacquainted with this most curious kind of vegetation would suppose it capable of containing the smallest amount of nutriment for ostriches, sheep, or goats. ”

“ When the commotion has subsided, and Toto is at a safe distance from the dam, a troop of ostriches come down to drink. They are no doubt delighted to find such an abundant supply of water, after the somewhat scanty allowance which has been portioned out to them of late; and they stand greedily scooping up large quantities with their broad bills ”

“ Some day, perhaps, a fortune will be made out of it, but at present its chief value seems to be as a moral discipline to the settler and as covert for the sage-hen.
Would not the ostrich thrive upon some of these prodigious tracts of unalterable land? Can all America not match the African karoo shrub, which the camel-sparrow loves? Ostrich farming has some special recommendations, especially for "the sons of gentlemen" and others disinclined for arduous labour, who have not much of either money or brains to start with. ”