The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1900-02-27
SOUTH AFRICAN FEATHER FARMS.
Residents Make a Good Thing out of
the PIumage of Ostriches.
From the London Mail.

From the London Mail.
The ostrich is one of the treasures South
Africa possesses. But perhaps he is a his
for a Barbary bird is an edition de luxe
compared with the cape variety. Also he
is less valuable than he once was, when
the incubator was an unknown resource
and Matching out chicks a more hazard
Gus undertaking than 1t is now. Though
in the old days $500 passed hands often
for a frst-rate pair of birds, which now
Els will purchase, and a, ''plucking' will
go for 81 los that in palmy times would
have fetched ELS, ostrich farming is not a
played-out profession. No stock farm can
be a greater disappointment and anxiety
to it's owner than one devoted TO ostriches
the most extraordinary pernickety"
birds imaginable, the most willful and the
most obstinate. Anyone who fancies that
because the creatures can digest such
things as gimlets, soap and old gloves, and
in consequence argues that they are the
hardy brutes they may appear to be, is
very wrong indeed. The birds suffer from
mysterious ills in extreme childhood, and
in adult age are so quarrelsome of temper
and brittle of leg that the amalgamation
is all too frequently the cause of an I'M
timely end.
Little Hottentots are employed to herd
the chicks and feed them when they are
ready TO go out of doors, and these custo-
dams, being of the same lazy nature as
their elders, are a dreadful trouble to the
farmers one of their vagaries is to neg
lect their, charges, another to kill them
because they are too troublesome.
When helchicks grow up, as they speed
lily do, they take their revenge upon their
whilom guards. They steal their food,
they scare them and would MAIN and
kill them if the children did not carefully
keep out of their way and WELD the
"tackey" when they encounter the irate
birds This is a weapon without which
the most valiant man is as babe before
an ostrich that is a ''quei'-in other words
vicious. 1t is simply a branch Of the mi
mosa, with the prickles left on the end
of it. When the ostrich runs amuck the
the "tackey" is brandished in his face; he
shuts his eyes instinctively to avoid the
long prickles and the attacked victim
promptly lodges him as he proceeds on
his headlong and infuriated rush.
Though the birds, when they are driven
into the box that cabins them while they
are deprived of their feathers, exhibit in
tense and foolish alarm, and would wreak
no end of vengeance on one another and
the "hands" engaged in plucking them
if they had the opportunity, no sooner are
they out of the box than they dance off,
apparently much more frightened than
hurt They behave, indeed. precisely like
sheep brought into the branding shed.
Like sheep too. they are branded.
After the plucking the feathers have all
to be assorted and tied up, a piece of
work ordinarily performed by profession
al sorters. Again the services of the far
mers wife, who plays an active part in
an ostrich farm, may be called into re-
QUESTION to wash these plumes that are
badly soiled In each wing there are a
couple of dozen long white handsome
feathers.