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Show " ON AN OSTRICH FARM. AN AFRICAN INDUSTRY TRANSPLANTED TRANSPLANT-ED TO CALIFORNIA. Ostriches Are Proillahle Illril to Hnlae. akmicililnf; About the Itiilne Ppu-lur Ppu-lur Superstitions Exploded llatclni ) Means of Incubators. There lire at least half a dozen ostrich fcmns in southern California. They havi eased to be a eurieMty there, and each How represents a coinmoivial enterprise. Americans buy one-half the millions oi Ostrich feathers produced annually. 1 lattilimated thai this country expends fW.O'MMKKi a year fur these nrnaments. Each est rich when full grown yields a leather income of from $:il to !j:;no per annum. The elegant, long black and wiiitepluniesseil foi .f-'i each at the farms, and readily brin,.; $1(1 each at retail in lSew York or Chicago. Kvevy feather has a value, if it is iifUeirully large for n:to it is worth at least, li) cent.'. The very small ones, Otlcrwise useless, inakfc up into cheap souvenirs and are eagerly purchased l.y vHting tourists nt V''i('''S varying from 10 cents to l. The ,'lunies produced in Southern California are fully as valuable as those from the faraway C.ipo Colony. Tho eggs, if fertile, sell for f-'i each, pud g nerally from '" to 80 per cent, of nil eggs produced will hatch. If not fertile, fer-tile, tho f hells are- in demand at from $' to $5 each as curios and ornaments. A young ostrich just out of the shell is considers! con-siders! equivalent to $."(), and his value Increases until he is full grown, when ."iO0 is a low market price. The expense of maintaining an ostrich farm is comparatively slight. The birds in this country are usually healthy. Their appetites are appalling, but they Cre satisfied with alfalfa, cabbage and crushed bones for a regular diet. On occasions they expect large and small pebbles, bits of iron, old shoes, tin cans and such delicacies. A hungry ostrich is not particular about his fixid. It is jnerely a question of deglutition with Jiim. If what ho eats will go down or rather up his somewhat ehtstic throat (for he eats nnd drinks head downward), lie feels safe to trust his digestive organs to do the rest. The ostrich has long been maligned. Jn our schoolboy days natural history taught ns to despise the ostrich, first, be-rause be-rause of its lack of sense, anil second, for its want of parental instincts. We were told that this great, ungainly bird, when chased by a native South African upon the back of a fleet horse or a tame ostrich, os-trich, would hide his weary head in the Wind, tinder the impression that if he could .not see his pursuer the pursuer could not we him. This fablo is no more true, at least of the domesticated bird, than the other, which actually says that the mother ostrich lays her eggs in the liot sand and leaves them to the tender care of the sun and the Hottentot. The ostrich egg shell is sometimes one-eixteenth one-eixteenth of an inch thick. It is fully twenty-four times the size of an ordinary lien's egg. Incubation requires forty days, during which period the male and female alternate in the domestic duty of keeping the eggs wami. Most of the hatching is now done by incubators. A 800 egg incubator has a capacity for but 27 ostrich eggs. At the farm near Santa Monica 1 saw the birds on the nest, however, and tho yonng ostriches after they were removed from the nest. The eggs at this sitting sit-ting nearly all hatched, and as I visited the farm frequently I grew very much interested in both parents and children. The nest consisted of a pile of sand in the center of the field assigned to the two breeders. The male bird manifested the utmost interest in tho business in hand, and devoted more than fifteen hours a day to the maternal duty of sitting on the eggs. When his mate was on the nest he would shield her from the excessive heat cf that genii-tropical sun by extending his ample wings over her. The two ostriches os-triches were rutxlelg of parental affection. . The exemplary conduct of the male epecially won my admiration, for he was ever on the alert to render assistance to his patient spouse, and when the little fellows pecked their way through the hard shell he kept vigilant watch over them. The old story of neglect of its offspring is clearly disproved. Thoro are no feathered animals more dutiful. The old birds are not awkward, but the young ones have no sense whatever, and so it is necessary to remove the latter lat-ter as soon as possible after the' escape I from the shell to prevent them from wandering into danger. It requires skillful coaxing and no little maneuvering maneuver-ing to entice tile fond parents from the nest, but this accomplished the young ostriches are transferred to a sand box in tho sun, where they must have close attention at-tention all day long to keep them from niishnrjs which their utter lack of discretion dis-cretion and extreme awkwardness would certainly bring upon them. At night they are placed in an incubator. incu-bator. Until they are several months old the absurdly heedless and tender things require very great care. After they pass from infancy, however, they generally thrive. The losses usually occur oc-cur within the first month. When the birds are seven months oid the first plucking occurs, and from that tiiuo forward they give up their feathers twice a year. The females begin laying eggs at three veal's of age, and produce from thirty to ninety eggs eaclj annually. an-nually. In tkmth Africa, until about thirty years ago, tho natives killed the ostrich for his plumes. Since that, date the domesticated birds have furnished most of tho feathers of commerce. Each lird when fully grown has twenty-fire pinnies on eachwing. will two rows of floss feathers underneath. Above the white plumes are a row of long feathers and under them are a smaller si.e. In the male these are black and in tho female drab. The tail has also a tuft of feathers similarly arranged. ar-ranged. The first feathers are' not usually ns line in quality, as large in tine or as great in quantity as those of M:b.eqmuit pi uckiugs. Cor. Chicago Ji'ows. |