INCUBATING OSTRICHES

I am writting this from my personal experiences and studies only and you may not agree with some of the points. We are having exceptional success with our birds and I know genetics is important to hatchability but there is nothing we can do about genetics except change bloodlines. The next thing we have to think about is getting a young chick out of every fertile egg. I hope this helps you with this objective.

The first and most important thing about incubating any type of eggs is that they must have the correct proportion of nutrients inside the egg. The single most important thing you can do for a better hatch rate is to be sure your breeders are on a balanced diet that is high in vitamins and minerals. Most feed manufacturers produce a feed that is barely adequate. The reason for this is that the vitamins and minerals are the most expensive per pound ingredient. They all know how to make a better feed but most farmers want the lowest cost they can find. The lowest cost feed is usually not the cheapest but it takes a lot of time and study to determine this. For the past year, I have been supplimenting my feed with extra vitamins and minerals. This year, so far, we have hatched the healthiest most active chicks we have ever had.

We gather eggs as soon as possible after they are laid and immediately put them under a UV light to kill any bacteria on the shell. We never wash eggs unless they are completely covered with manure which has happened only a couple of times. It is amazing what a farmer can learn by just watching his animals and we let our ostriches teach us how to clean eggs. We have sand in our breeder pens and the hen will pick up a little sand and drop it on the egg. The sand will stick to the wet areas. She will then gently roll the egg until the sand is wiped off and repeat the process until it is spotless. Now, if we get a dirty egg, we use clean sand and clean the egg as our hens do. We store the eggs in a corner of the house that has a temperature of 65-70 degrees and turn them every day. We never store eggs more than one week and put them into the incubator once a week.

We have a Hatchrite incubator that really is nice but you don't need an expensive incubator to have great results. The main things to consider in an incubator are temperature, humidity, and air flow. The temperature has to remain a constant 97.5 degrees at every level. The only way to accomplish this is to have sufficient air flow to carry the air to every level and to have a good reliable thermometer to verify this. We exhaust all of the incubator air to the outside of the room and leave a window over the air conditioner open 3 inches. The air stream from the air conditioner creates a venturi effect making the air pressure in the room positive. This also creates better air flow in the incubator. Also, you should never put more than 1/3-1/4 of your incubator capacity in at one time. The chicks will need an increasing amount of oxygen as the embryo develops. The largest amount of oxygen is needed just before they are put into the hatcher and they may not have a sufficient amount if your incubator is full of eggs that are at the same level of development.

One of the most difficult parts of incubating ostrich eggs is keeping the humidity correct. I live in Northern Kentucky and it is pretty humid here. You have to keep the humidity inside the incubator such that the egg will loose approximately 15 percent of its original weight, although we have had eggs hatch pretty well even at 12-13 percent loss. The only way to tell how much weight they are loosing is to weight the eggs at first and then every 5-7 days until hatch. The weight should be approximately 2 percent less every 6 days. The problem with this is that each egg has a different porosity causing them to loose a different amount of moisture. After you have hatched several, you will be able to tell if one egg will loose considerably more than the others just by looking at the number of pores in the shell. Set your incubator so that most will loose from 13-15 percent and, if one is loosing too much, put a little tape around the center of the egg to expose fewer pores. It will take you a while to get this right. You should weigh the egg every day until you get the right amount. Eggs from the same hen usually have the same porosity. Keeping good records will really help you in every aspect of incubation and raising the chicks. Write everything down on paper, even if it seems unimportant at the time.

I now put my eggs into the hatcher on day 35 and have a better hatch rate than ever before. This year we have had an unbelievable 100 percent hatch rate. We both know this won't last but it has for 32 eggs so far. In the hatcher, the eggs are not turned. When I first started incubating ostrich eggs, I would candle them and draw a line around the air cell with a pencil. Next day, I candle them and if the air cell has moved, I redraw the line. Do this each day until the air cell pulls down drastically. This is not necessary every day if the air cell is not moving. After you hatch a few, you will learn which day the air cell will move a lot. This is caused by the chick moving around and pulling the inner membrane from the shell. Usually on the next day after the air cell has moved really a lot. the chick will pip the inner membrane. Usually within 12-24 hours after internally pipping, the chick will pip the outside of the shell. This will take time and experience for you to learn exactly when to expect to see the beak. If the chick doesn't pip the shell after about 12-24 hours, I break a small hole in the shell so the chick can get oxygen. I haven't had to do this this year because my chicks have been so lively and active but I'm sure I will. It is really difficult to know exactly when to assist them and the books say not to but I want to save every one. It would probably be best to listen to the books until you get more experience.

This year, probably because of the better feed for the breeders, we have had chicks hatching a couple of days earlier than the 42 days printed in the books. We have done nothing different from last year except supplimenting our feed with the vitamins and minerals. Our chicks are a lot more active. When the chicks hatch, we leave them in the hatcher about 6 hours to dry off before moving them to the brooder. We give them 1/2 cc of Fastrack paste probiotics. I also sprinkle a powdered form of probiotic on top of their feed for the first three months. This overloads their system with good bacteria so that the bad bacteria can't get a start. The brooder should be about 90 degrees for about 7-10 days. you can lower the temperature about 5 degrees every two weeks until the outside temperature is the same as your set temperature. The chicks should still have supplimental heat at night or on cool days until they are 3 months old. They should be let outside as soon as possible to get exercise. Even if the temperature is lower than perfect, they should be allowed to run for a few minutes each day. They should have no feed for about 5 days but, on the third day, I put a couple of teaspoons of feed on the floor for each 10 chicks so they can get practice eating. This does take practice for them to pick the feed up and throw it to the back of their mouths so they can swallow it. They need to digest the yolk sac that is inside their bodies but this slight amount of feed will not harm them.

You may notice that one chick can't stand up and its legs are out to each side. In this case, we take two of those elastic bands that my daughter uses to hold her hair in a pony tail, and link them together and put one over each of its legs. Its legs should be in the same position as the other chicks. This should be left on for 24 hours and then removed. The chick should be able to stand now. If not, put the bands on for another 24 hours. Be sure they are not too tight.

If this seems difficult to understand or if you have any other problems, please email me or call and I will try to answer your questions to the best of my ability. There will be no charge for my help. You can repay me by helping the next new ratite rancher with his (her) problems.

FEEDING AND FENCING

I am going to attempt to tell you about my feeding and fencing for ostriches. I believe this will help a lot of you in your businesses. This works for me but may not apply to your particular situation.

I build my fences with used scrap oil field pipe and sucker rods. I get 32 ft. lengths of oil field pipe for 5 dollars each and cut them into 4-8 ft posts. I drive the posts 2 feet into the ground, leaving 6 feet above the ground. I then weld 5 equal spaced sucker rods to the posts spaced equal distance apart with the bottom rod about 18 inches off the ground. This keeps the breeders in very well and gives the dogs and coyotes a way out. I have never had a problem with dogs or coyotes in my pens with grown ostriches. They will want to leave pretty quick when the ostriches get after them. The rods have a little give so if the birds run into it, they will not hurt themselves. I pay 1 dollar each for the sucker rods. This costs me about 32 cents per finished foot for a 6 foot tall fence. I also build my gates out of these rods. The gates cost me about 3 dollars each. I drive the posts 12.5 feet apart and between these posts I weld a piece of scrap rod vertical to hold the horizontal rods more stationary. For the younger birds, I do the same thing except I leave off the bottom 3 rods and stretch a 4 foot tall woven wire fence. This costs me about 50 cents per foot finished. This fence will keep the birds in and the dogs out. I try to keep twice as many pens as I will need so I can alternate pens. This helps keep the clostridium bacteria down and also gives them more to graze. When I move them from one pen to the other, I open the gate and let them use both for a week or so. Then, I simply close the gate when they are in the pen I want. This helps keep stress to a minimum.

For my feed, I buy a commercial feed and add vitamins and minerals. All of the large feed mills add vitamins and minerals but these are the most expensive, per pound, ingredients. The feed mills have to make a feed that is competitively priced or they will be out of business so they cut back on the most expensive parts. If I make a feed that costs 10 dollars a bag and the next guy sells his feed for 7 dollars a bag, which are you going to buy. The average person doesn't know, or have time, to study which is the most cost efficient. By doing nothing except adding the vitamins and minerals, my birds eat about 25 percent less and do as good or better than before. I'm sure the breeders are doing better because of the number of eggs we are getting and by the way the chicks are hatching this year. The biggest thing that I have done the last couple of years that is, I believe, unique is that I feed bread. You can go to a bakery and get day old bread for free or for a very small charge. We break it up depending on the size of the bird. This is the same bread you would have bought in your grocery 5 minutes before the guy picked it up. I still give the correct ration of feed but add bread as a treat. Be sure to feed no mold or sugar coated bread. Below are my reasons for feeding this "feed bread".

First, the birds love it. They, after they get used to it, will fight over it and will come to me anytime they see me near the fence. Have you ever threw a handful of corn to the chickens and seen how they will go into a feeding frenzy. That is the same for ostriches except they are much larger chickens. Any time I need to handle them, for whatever reason, they will come right up to me and will not try to run away.

I say that stress is the major cause of death of ostrich chicks. Any way you can relieve stress will be well worth the time and money spent. Many books may say impaction is the major cause of early chick death, but stress is the biggest cause of impaction. If your birds have the stress reduced, they will have fewer impactions. My birds are used to being touched and fed by hand and are not as stressed when I get into the pen. Another plus for bread, I believe, is that the bread will expand when wet and thus the birds may feel more full and eat less foreign material. It is also very easily digested. Bread also contains yeast which may help the birds digest more of the feed they eat.

We read books about raising ostriches and every book has a section on diseases. Until I am proven wrong, I will continue to think that the best defense against disease is a good offense. I have never used drugs or antibiotics and I believe we would all be better off if fewer antibiotics were given to animals used for our food. As I stated earlier, I have twice as many pens as needed and, by changing them every 6 months, they have more natural vegetation to graze and less bacteria buildup. I, also, am a firm believer in probiotics ( the opposite of antibiotics). This will overload the intestines of the birds with the bacteria that should be found in them, thus allowing no room for the bad bacteria to get a foot hold. I am not sure that this will eliminate a disease after it has started, but I am sure that this will allow fewer diseases to start. So far I have had none of the problems you read about. My birds almost never have an impaction. We have never had a bacteriological death. Whatever the reason for our great success, I had just as soon keep things as they are.

If I can help any of you, I will be glad to try. Don't hesitate to call me or email your questions.