The Intermountain Catholic. (Salt Lake City [Utah] ;) 1899-1920, 1907-05-04
ARIZONA OSTRICH FARM.
CONTINUED from Page H.


thew are SIX or seven weeks old, when they become
independent take firm hold on lire, and hustle
for themselves. two months old chick is always
hungry, he is pecking and eating every moment he
IS awake and will devour more food than grown
bird. They grow fast. gaining foot month in
height for SIX or seven months Some of the birds
on the Salt River farms eight and nine feet
from the head to the ground and weigh from 400 to
500 pounds. Some one has said that facts are
sometimes stranger than fiction, and in the wonder
full provision made by nature for the perpetuaton
or the ostrich the saying becomes aphorism. The
first three eggs laid by this singular bird are sterile
and will not hatch. By wonderful law of instinct,
or call it what WILL the mother lays these eggs
outside the nest There is deep and mysterious
law of nature compelling the bird to follow this
command of instinct On the African deserts when
the nesting time draws near the birds retire into
the most lonely and unfrequented parts of the sol
itary and desolate region far away from the haunts
of beast and man and from water. Vow when the
little creature the chicken, is liberated from its
prison by the bursting of its walls it is very thirsty
and Graves for water anything to slake its thirst.
But there is no water. The mother looks upon Its
gasping offspring with its tiny tongue protruding,
carries 1t to where sterile egg lying in the
sand, breaks the shell, and at the little perish
ing creature buries its head In the opened egg sucks
IN the liquid refreshment and lives. The next day
the little thing staggers by itself to the wonderful
fountain of the desert and the day after it is able
10 walk upright to the we'll.
On the ostrich farms alfalfa ranges of Ari-
iona the young birds are taken away and raised
by hand the barren eggs gathered by the keeper and
sold for ST each. There is another very strange
thing about the wonderful knowledge or instinct OF
the ostrich. 1t an egg Is removed from her nest
while she Is Matching, and sterile egg, heated to
the same temperature eggs which she is set
ting and of the same color and size substituted she
viii at detect the change and roll the eggs
out If all the eggs IN the nest be taken away and
sterile eggs put in their places, the mother viii
abandon the nest and lay more for months. lie
you ask me the explanation of this marvellous and
mysterious sense, can only answer in the words
of the inspired writer, This is the Lords doing
and it is wonderful in our eyes"
About fifteen eggs is the average setting and
the period of incubation forty-two days. The male
bird takes upon himself the heavier labor of the
tract He takes charge of the nest and assumes
control of the work at o'clock in the afternoon
and stays with his Job til o'clock in the morning,
when the female relieves him. At noon he returns
and keeps house for hour while his partner goes
for her lunch The male bird turns the eggs once
every twenty-four hours Incubators have been
lately introduced and are giving satisfaction. The
chicks when two weeks old, sell for $25 EACH and
when four years of age pair, male and female sell
for from $400 to 5000.
The birds do not differ in appearance until they
are eighteen months Old at that age they take ON
an altogether different plumage, the male arrayng
himself in black and the female in drab. When
of their first plucking and after that they give up
their pumes every eight months. Not until the
third plucking do the feathers bring much in the
market, the first and second pluckings selling for
few shillings A healthy ostrich will yield $50
worth of feathers every year for twenty-five years.
though the average life of the bird is seventy-ive
years. Many hundreds of young birds roam over
alfalfa fields enclosed with wire netting. Breeding
pairs are confined in a twoacre enclosure. The
range birds feed like cattle, alfalfa grass pick
ing up quartz pebbles which are scattered over the
fields for their use, and which, for them the
same end as gravel for hens and chickens. When
the hens are laying they given, from time to
time, diet of bone dust to help in the formation
of the egg shells. One of the most singular and in
teresting habits of the ostrich is his daily exercise
Every morning at sunrise the herd two by two, be-
gin trainin gfor the day by induging in combi-
nation cake-walk and Virginia reel. Then in single
file they race around the pasture till they thor
oughy limbered up. When hating. they form in
squares and begin to dance, introducing limitations
of the waltz, negro break-downs, cake-waks and
hornpipes 1t is a laughable and grotesque per-
Torrance, and when the birds are in full plumage
and their wings extended, not devoid of grace and
beauty of action The ostrich is the ornthological
goat He viii eat and digest anything Offer him