Ostriches

Our first overnight stop was in Oudtshoorn, an area known for its ostrich ranches.  Accordingly, we stopped at Canga Ostrich Farm for a fun, informative tour.  In the distant past, ostriches were raised primarily for their feathers used in high society fashion.  Now, ostriches are raised principally for their meat and eggs.  Ostrich meat is very low in cholesterol.  And, no, it doesn't taste just like chicken (more like beef).  An ostrich is killed for its meat while still younger than one year.  Even at that young age, a farmer will get over 130 pounds of meat per ostrich.  If not killed for its meat within its first year, the life expectancy of an ostrich is around 75 years of age. 

A female ostrich lays one egg every other day.  She instinctively kicks out the unfertilized eggs from the nest, until she has a minimum of 15 fertilized eggs.  If you were to buy an ostrich egg to eat, it would take you one and a half hours to hard-cook it.  Then, you would need a hammer to open the shell.  But, after you do all that, it should fill you up.  Eating one ostrich egg is equivalent to eating 24 chicken eggs!

Has complex eye lids

A few anatomical facts:  An ostrich has no teeth nor crop.  It swallows rocks directly into its stomach, where the stones grind up the food eaten.  An ostrich will eat almost anything - cell phones, earrings, whole shoes.  One farmer noticed that his whole clothesline of wet clothes was missing.  He later found remnants of all the clothing passing through his ostrich's stomach.  


An ostrich's brain is tiny - weighing only 40 grams - while its eye weighs 60 grams.  The eye is quite interesting to watch as it has three lids – so it can blink from the top, from the bottom, or from the side (like a windshield wiper).   

Has only two toes on each foot

An ostrich is the only bird with only two toes; this might contribute to it being a fast-running bird, capable of running spurts of 70 km/hour.  Five of our students were chosen to ride an ostrich.   (They didn't stay on for very long!)  Jim was very disappointed that he wasn't chosen.   

...than Andrew!

Margaret looks more comfortable in the saddle...

Matt and his sweetie.

Matt Dummer was picked out of our crowd to kiss an ostrich.  The tour guide put an alfalfa pellet between his lips and told him to "hold very still".  You should know that Matt was one of our students who had bungee jumped earlier in the day.  After, he said that he had felt much greater fear as that ostrich beak came directly at his face.  (Luckily, the ostrich didn't take any body parts along with the alfalfa pellet!)

Even Beth got to feed the ostriches!