Staying at Berluda, you have the unique opportunity to visit one of the largest working ostrich farms in the world. Whereas the touristic ostrich show farms can tell you all about the bird, we take you behind the scenes on an industrial working ostrich farm and into the incubation rooms of the biggest ostrich hatchery in the world. Thus, we can share with you the remarkable and multiple facets of the actual ostrich industry.
But let us start at the beginning. Why on earth did we ever begin farming with ostriches? The answer to that is…. feathers. Not the leather and not the meat, just the feathers. Humans have been fascinated by ostrich feathers for thousands of years. In Egyptology, it is common knowledge that the ostrich was the emblem of Themis, the goddess of law and order, and because of the almost perfect balance and symmetry of the plume, it was a symbol of justice in ancient Egypt. Touring their tombs and studying their hieroglyphs, one finds ostrich feathers featuring abundantly.
In Africa, too, the ostrich feather was a symbol of royalty, wealth and power, as kings and queens of almost all African tribes sported bright white plumes in their headdresses. And since then, the ostrich feather even earned an honorary place in the coat of arms of the Prince of Wales!
The popularity in Europe steadily grew throughout the 1800’s, and in 1846 just more than one thousand pounds of wild ostrich feathers were sold to European exporters in Cape Town for ￡8000. By 1880 the first ostrich feather ‘boom’ was in full swing, with around 164,000 pounds of farmed feathers exported. Just around then, the first of a few hundred Jewish families from Latvia, Lithuania and Russia started settling in Oudtshoorn and the Klein Karoo, seeking their fortunes with a handful of plumes. Throughout South Africa Oudtshoorn became known as Little Jerusalem, as Jewish salesmen walked from farm to farm, trading imported European goods for stacks of ostrich plumes.
The true feather boom, however, happened after the turn of the century, when the best of plumes earned a staggering ￡500 per pound and chosen breeding stock fetched around ￡1000 per pair! By now, ostrich farmers and their families undertook extended trips to Europe and built vast mansions – today still referred to as feather palaces – costing anything up to ￡25 000 each! These were built with the finest of local sandstone, imported hardwoods, and cast-iron decorative “brook lace” from Leeds in England. Many of those palaces can still be seen today and the smaller Oudtshoorn town houses of these ostrich barons can be visited by tourists.
In 1913, the feather boom reached its ultimate peak, with more than a million pounds of feathers being exported and fetching millions of pounds sterling in return. But… tragedy was waiting in the wings.
With the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, and with the development of open-top automobiles, the ostrich feather quickly lost its appeal, and the industry came tumbling down in disarray. One after another, ostrich farmers went bankrupt and the large Jewish community, in which hands most of the trade lay, diversified and dwindled. To this day, this tragic socio-economic collapse is referred to as The Fall of The Feather Era.
Today, 110 years later and with leather and meat having joined the list of sought-after ostrich products, the industry once again waves the flag of success in the Klein Karoo. But more about that in our next blog, where we will look at the current state of affairs and the multiple uses for ostrich products worldwide.