Ostrichs and Rastas

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As we enter the pen, the guide says if the male gets aggressive just dive to the floor and he'll run over you or sit on you. But don't worry I have a thorny stick to hopefully prevent that...
We are at Highgate Ostrich Farm in Oudtshoon, they breed Ostriches for their meat, feathers and skins. We are visiting the breeding pens, these hold a male and female pair who mate for life. These are the lucky ones as their job is to breed and bring up the chicks. Other fields have groups which will also breed but their eggs will be taken away, hatched in incuators then given to the breeding pairs amongst their own young. The ostriches can't tell the difference between their own young and anothers so this works well. Not only do the fields of ostrich get their eggs taken away, they also have the short straw entirely as they are breed for meat and feathers, so every 9 months they have 5% of their feathers plucked and finally end up on my plate! The plucking is not too bad though as they have a small nervous system so can't feel the pain, only accidentally ripping their toenail out will cause pain, urgh!!
The tour of the farm includes the incubators, feeding some females grain, seeing the bizarre dwarf ostrich which will only produce dwarf ostrich babies, a demonstration of how to make a feather duster and a ride on a male ostrich, followed by watching a race of 2.
The eggs take 42 days to hatch and are turned manually, twice a day, in the incubators to check for cracks which indicate hatching. They are then moved to drawer incubators so that they don't fall when making their way out of the egg. An ostrich egg has a thick membrane while the chick is inside so we can stand on them without breaking them. In the breeding pen, the female will lay an egg every 2 days and will sit on them once there are 16 eggs. The male will sit on the eggs during the night. The chicks reach maturity at 14months and the females lay a practice egg which is about half the size of a standard egg, they then crack this and eat it for the calcium. The next eggs will be fertile. Most ostrich live to about 40 years old but the farm have had one live to his 80s.
We leave the farm and continue to town for a great ostrich steak lunch!

After a short drive we reach the other end of the Garden Route, Knysna. A very picturesque town on a lagoon. After a sunset cruise around the lagoon we venture off into the township to find the Rastafarian community where we will spend the night. We are greeted by Sister Kerri who hosts the B&B, she is about 60 and is a single parent living with her son Shikasi 22. She has lived a great life and has many stories of her 25 years traveling around the world, but she finally fell in love with Africa so has been based here for about 13 years. After an evening together eating vegan food and watching Spain win against Honduras, we watch a Rasta documentary which was filmed here and in Jamaica. Good to get an insight into the religion although it's still quite confusing what some of the differences are apart from the obvious ganga smoking.
Sister Kerri has multiple jobs, she works Mon to Thur for a paper, advertising. She has a stall at weekends selling non-dairy frozen fruit type ice cream, we try some of the banana flavour, it's delicious. She also sells a back massager which she has had manufactured close by and she also teaches in the local community educare system. Overall she's very busy. Her son is the same, he has just finished studying computing but at 10 was earning more than her at his fruit and veg stall, he paid his own way through college.

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