From “Naturalized Birds of the World” by Sir Christopher Lever, 1987 ed (Not the compromised later edition, some editor must have told him that his prose was overwrought, i just don't think they understood his comic genius, hats off to you Sir Lever), p11-12
Ostrich—
The first pair of ostriches despatched to Australia (Victoria) from Paris in 1862 as the intended founder-stock of an aigrette or osprey farm died on the voyage. A second consignment of four that followed in 1869 was more successful; the birds were safely landed at Melbourne, from where they were transferred by their importer, Mr (later Sir) Samuel Wilson, a noted Australian pastoralist, to his estate at Longerenong in the Wimmera district. Here, in the following year, one of the hens laid and hatched 12 or 13 eggs, 11 of the chicks being reared successfully.
The next season, however, was exceptionally wet, and only seven young were hatched, all of which soon died. The hens showed no discretion over their choice of nesting sites, often laying on the bare soil which flodded easily after heavy rain, causing the eggs to become addled and the brooding bird to develop rheumatism. Before long one of the cocks became extremely ill-tempered; one man had his trousers torn from the waist to the shin by a single kick, and although he was unhurt others were less fortunate. Wilson claimed to have seen a wooden fence-rail snapped in two by the kick of an angry Ostrich.
These vicissitudes, combined with a climate that was clearly too wet and predation of the young by native marsupial cats (Dasyurus spp.), forced Wilson in 1874 to send his surviving stock inland to a station owned by C.M. and S.H. Officer at Murray Downs near Swan Hill on the north bank of the Murray River in New South Wales. The Journey was made during some of the heaviest rainstorms recorded in Victoria, causing the ox-carts to become bogged in the mud, as a result of which several of the birds died.
Soon after the arrival of the survivors at Murray Downs one of the Officers’ stockmen carelessly left a yard gate open, through which a hen escaped and broke her neck by running into a wire fence. One of the two remaining hens laid and single egg and then died, leaving the Officers with a total stock of three cocks and a hen. This nucleus they attempted to augment by ordering further birds from the Cape of Good Hope, but these failed to materialize. Instead, they acquired from the Cape an incubator (for which they paid the then not inconsiderable sum of £100), in which two clutches of eggs laid by the surviving hen were successfully hatched; initially the chicks did well, but later contracted South African disease, the first symptoms of which are similar to those of ‘staggers’ in domestic farm stock, followed by an inability to remain standing unless in constant movement; as a result, the unfortunate birds soon succumbed to exhaustion and starvation.
The next three clutches were more successful, the four healthy offspring from the first being ready to breed in 1878. To prevent attacks by the cocks and predation by Wedge-tailed Eagles (Aquila audax), a keeper was appointed to guard the young birds; however, Lord Casey, who in 1877 had been appointed Governor-General of Australia, recorded that many Ostrich eggs at Murray Downs were broken by stones dropped on them by Black-breasted Buzzards (Hamirostra melansoternon)- a mode of attack that the buzzards also practised on the eggs of Emus (Dromaius novaehollandiae).
The Officers’ Ostriches, in addition to grazing the lush Murray Downs pastures, were fed on chopped lucerne, sorghum maize, bonemeal and gravel. Their plumes, marketed in London, were said to be superior in quality to those produced in South Africa.
When Suetonius Officer died in 1882 the population had increased to over a hundred, in the following year, C.M. Officer sold the Murray Downs station and transferred part of the stock to a smaller property a few kilometres south at Kerang in Victoria, and part ot another of his estates, the Kallara Station, on the Darling River. The stock at Kerang eventually increased to 120, but although at Kallara the older birds flourished their young were all poisoned by the mineral salts in the station’s artesian wells.
Oh the plight of the Australian ostrich,...
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