The Golden Ostrich

Press, Volume L, Issue 14908, 23 February 1914, Page 6

The Golden Ostrich

Australians who have wished to start ostrich-farming have recently been unable to buy ostriches in South Africa for export, because the South Africans refuse to assist in the building-up in Australia of a rival branch of their own very profitable industry. Australia, however, still exports stock for the improvement of South African herds, and the New Zealand breeder, with a market iv tho Argentine for his pedigree stock is not deterred from selling by the thought that he is benefiting a rival. How profitable tho ostrichfeather industry is to South Africa is shown by an article in the "''East African Standard." The value of the feathers exported in 1906 was £1,500.000, and in 1911 it had risen to £2,250,000, and is still rising. Ostrichfarming is not so easy as it might seem. The production of feathers hae reached a high degree of specialisation, and the great prosperity of the industry is largely the result of careful study of the bird, and judicious selection and mating. The figures look attractive. A good plucking bird fed on lucerne can generally be depended on to give three crops of feathers in two years, an acre of lucerne will cany three birds, and the profits per plucking range from £5 to £7. The very light cost of transport is one of the features of ostrich-farming. There is an immense difference between taking live stock to market, or milk to a dairy factory, and taking out tho year's feather crop of on ordinary holding in one load of a Cape cart drawn by two horses. The ostrich has established hundreds of people on the land who would never have succeeded without it, and has given rise to irrigation schemes that make for the general enrichment of the country.