PLUMAGES OF THE OSTEICH DUERDEN. 567" 



never uniform over all the body. The body feathers of the chick are 

 pushed out gradually, one at a time, not simultaneously, from 4 or 5 

 months onward, and are replaced by larger feathers of an altogether 

 different type. Instead of being mottled, the new feathers are of a 

 uniformly dark gray or slate color, often tinged with white for a 

 time at the extreme tip, which is no longer tapering but rounded (pi. 

 3, fig. 1). The juvenal feathers first appear along the sides of the 

 hinder part of the body, a number coming out about the same time. 

 Often the chick feather will remain attached to the tip of the new 

 feather, hanging loosely, and only breaking off after the juvenal 

 feather has protruded for some distance. After a number have 

 grown out at the sides others begin to appear along the back, and then 

 odd ones push out over the body generally. Some chick feathers 

 may, however, remain in their sockets until the birds are 12 months 

 or more old, those around the base of the neck being the last to drop 

 out. The rapidity of the change is partly determined by the nutri- 

 tive condition of the bird and partly by the strain. 



The chick, as a whole, begins to lose its mottled appearance from 

 6 to 9 months onward. This is partly due to the replacement of the 

 lighter tipped chick feathers by juvenals of a uniform hue and partly 

 to the fading and wearing away of the light brown tip of the old ones 

 remaining. By the time the chicks are a year old, nearly all the 

 body feathers show the slate or drab color of the juvenal plumage, 

 those of the cocks being somewhat darker than those of the hens. 

 All the feathers of the plumage, however, are not fully ripe until the 

 birds are about 16 months old, as usual the last to ripen being the 

 wing quills. In the wild chick some of the wing quills would ripen 

 much later than this, for, in nature, the first quills are not got rid 

 of all at the same time as is the case under farming conditions. 



The ventral or underbody feathers of the juvenal plumage are 

 white or light gray in both the cock and the hen, but by 16 months 

 some of the true blacks are beginning to show in the cocks, and, ulti- 

 mately, the ventrals are all black in the cocks but remain white in 

 the hens. 



Under farming conditions the quills of the spadonas are all pulled 

 out at from 8 to 9 months, and the wing quills of the juvenal begin 

 to show in about a month's time. They have been found experimen- 

 tally to grow at the rate of from 1 to 2 inches per week. The juvenal 

 wing plumes, known as " first-after-chicks," are sometimes uniformly 

 white in the cock, though usually they are tipped with black. 

 Rarely some of the juvenal wing plumes in the hen are pure white; 

 generally they are tipped with black or have an irregular admixture 

 of gray, and though sometimes longer, are usually not as dense nor 

 as valuable as those of the cock. The juvenal wing plumes are much 

 larger than the spadonas and more rounded at the top, but the wing 



