Description: Highgate Ostrich farm, Oudtshorn, South Africa

This farm is in Oudstshorn, the ostrich capital of the world and is just down the road from another Ostrich farm, Safari Ostrich Farm and also not far from our wonderful guest house De Zeekoe Guest Farm.

We paid 66R per person for a full tour (11R per £1 when we were there) which was the most amazing value. We started with our guide looking at an ostrich chariot which was designed to be pulled by four ostriches but apparently it was a failure, it looked like a Ben Hur chariot but the system of braking and steering was requiring a little refinement so it was not used at all.

The next place was the feather room where we discovered that ostrich feathers are plucked from live ostriches once a year. They are used mainly for feather dusters as the feather boa industry has lost out in the fashion stakes. We also found that they use the leather of the body, the legs and the skin of its neck for making bags and other leather items. Novelties are also made for tourists out of the leather, feathers and the eggs of course. In the section we watched a man making feather dusters; he can make over 200 per day, using a machine that was over 100 years old.

We next visited the electric incubator that held 400 eggs and also saw a really old incubator that ran on paraffin but unfortunately it was not that successful as the smell killed off a lot of the eggs as they are porous and absorbed the poisonous gases.

Feeding ostriches was our next stop. We could buy a small bag of corn for a couple of rand and then hand feed some of the ostriches. They pecked from a very flat hand but apart from a strong peck they didn’t hurt at all and these ostriches were quite tame.

We then got in our cars and drove with guidance to another part of the ostrich farm where we went into one of the enclosures to meet jack and Susie who had a clutch of eggs that they were incubating. We were told by our guide that these were domesticated and that we were quite safe visiting these ostriches with their eggs but ostriches in the wild would really go for you if you came anywhere near their eggs. Our guide just went over the jack who was taking a turn at egg sitting and just said ‘Of you get Jack’ and Jack obligingly hopped off the eggs. All of us in the group then took turns at standing on the clutch of eggs – they were really amazingly strong.

The next stage part was the most entertaining, the chance to sit or ride an ostrich. All of us sat on the ostrich which was in a special holding pen. After that people were offered the chance to ride obne of these enormous birds. While we were sitting on the benches around the pen one of the male ostriches took a liking to us and was very interested in my hat and our toes. It was quite unnerving to have this huge bird observing us quite as closely as they do have very large beaks.

All the male members of my little party were keen the ride the ostriches. My husband was sort of led around but the boys had the ostrich bottom smacked and off they went. One of them lasted a few minutes before entertaining everyone by falling off but the other son managed to stay on quite elegantly if you can describe riding an ostrich in any way as elegant.

After the tourists had had their turn the experts had a race down a race track on three ostriches and they can apparently run at about 70mph. It was a very quick race and none of them fell off!

After this we returned to the original farmstead to go through the shop and pay for the tour and any other souvenirs we chose to buy. We then went and sat on the tables under a huge tree and chairs and enjoyed sandwiches and complimentary water, juice or coffee and tea.

I felt we had excellent service from the guide and the tour was such amazing value at about £6 per person for about 2 hours of entertainment. I would thoroughly recommend a visit to Oudtshorn and particularly the Highgate Ostrich farm as everyone on the tour gets the opportunity to ride an ostrich which is not the case in every ostrich farm.
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