50 Hon. A. Douglas — Ostrich-farming 



night, excepting in wet weather, when the cock sits day and 

 night. 



One of the difficulties of the Ostrich-farmer, especially 

 when letting his birds graze in large camps on the natural 

 veldt, is their tendency to get wild and unmanageable. 

 This tendency is not so bad as it was in the early days, but 

 whether the innate wildness and fear of man has been lessened 

 by the domestication of the parents for several generations is 

 very doubtful. If half a nest of eggs from tame birds were put 

 into a wild Ostrich's nest, I do not think that there would be 

 the slightest difference in the chicks when they were hatched 

 as regards wildness. When first a brood of chicks is ap- 

 proached, and the parent birds give the note of alarm, the 

 nestlings run and drop flat in any little depression they 

 find in the ground. When picked up they remain limp and 

 sham being dead, in exactly the same way as wild chicks do. 

 But as soon as the parent birds allow a man to approach 

 them, and begin feeding round him, the chicks quickly 

 imitate their parents and in a few hours shew no more fear 

 of man than they do. If a lot of chicks is taken straight 

 away before they have left the nest, and put along with 

 another lot of chicks, they will all be just as wild or tame 

 as the foster-parents are — no matter how wild their real 

 parents may have been. 



The hen when sitting is perfectly tame and harmless, but 

 as soon as the chicks are hatched she becomes very fierce. 

 I once had a curious instance of this change in the hen. 

 Some men were working at a fence close to a sitting hen 

 Ostrich. She paid no attention to them till one day she 

 sprang from her eggs and knocked one of the men down, 

 very severely injuring him. On examining the nest, I found 

 in one egg a chick which squeaked ; and this had, no doubt, 

 caused the sudden change of behaviour in the hen. The 

 cock bird is always savage during the period of incubation, 

 and will fight furiously to keep men away from the nest. 

 When once you are at the nest and begin handling the eggs 

 he ceases to fight, and adopts a piteous supplicating'attitude, 

 as though he were beseeching you not to break the eggs ; 



