24 
The Australasian Scientific Magazine. [August i, 1885. 
OSTRICH FARMING IN AMERICA. 
BY 
R. L. 
With a climate boasting of 200 days of unadulterated sunshine, 125 days 
fair and mild, with an average of more sun than clouds, and 40 days only 
devoted to inevitable rain, fog, and mist, California, especially in its 
southern districts, seems well adapted to the pleasant, profitable industry 
of ostrich farming. The successful establishment of several ranches, and 
the superior quality of their produce, has fully proved this fact, and the 
wisdom and sound commercial policy which promoted its introduction into 
a country fitted for such a variety of enterprise. Indeed, it might be 
difficult to determine what industry, undertaken with intelligent energy and 
manly, conscientious working will, free from the “ can’t-be-done ” verdict of 
the modern amateur settler (which may be interpreted “won’t work or 
think,”) could practically fail with the numerous advantages California 
offers. 
Following the advice contained in the Consular report to the State 
department of the United States, suggesting ostrich farming as an industry 
which would probably prove successful in the milder portions of the country 
several ventures were made, and the new industry is already in the full tide 
of successful prosecution in various Californian counties. The New York 
Industrial News (1883), contains the following report: — “The ostrich farm 
at San Diego, California, established by an incorporated company of San 
Francisco, is now pronounced a success. All the birds (the same which 
reached the city last November) are doing finely, and the chicks which have 
since appeared are in fine condition; most of them are incubated. The 
ostrich eggs are a wonder to all who see them for the first time. The 
company has more orders for birds than it can promise to fill this season, 
and asks its own prices, which are 100 dollars to 120 dollars for a healthy 
chick four months old. These chickens will yield their first feathers when 
eight months old, which, picked, should bring at present market prices 
from seven dollars to ten dollars. The next picking, eight months from the 
first, should bring from forty to fifty dollars, and in two years the bird, if 
well cared for, is expected to be in full plumage, and to yield annually 200 
dollars worth of feathers. Ostriches breed when four years old, and from 
a pair is expected an average of fifty healthy chickens every year for twenty 
years. 
San Diego County, it may here be remarked, ranks next to San 
Bernardino County in size, containing 15,156 square miles, and extends 
150 miles from north to south, and from the Pacific Ocean to the Colorado 
River — a distance of a hundred miles east and west. Two branches of the 
coast range divide it into three divisions. The first, east of San Jacinto 
Mountains, comprises a portion of the Colorado Desert, declining up to 260 
feet below the sea level, yet containing the substance of fruitful soil, which 
