African ostrich rearing site to choose well-drained sandy soil area, 10-15 degrees of flat slopes on the fence to raise. Not in the main traffic routes, not close to the airport and the railroad side. Around the site, separated by wire mesh fence, flexible, fence height of about 2 meters, can avoid African ostrich frightened or walking sharply hit the fence injury.
African ostrich premises should sit in the north to the south, the sports field in the south. The premises are divided into brooder house, middle bird house and big bird house. Premises require heat preservation, rain, wind, beast and well ventilated. In front of the house, there is a corresponding required sports ground. The sports ground is rectangular; 1/3 of it is concrete and the rest is sand or grass. For medium and breeding bird houses, it is sufficient to make a sheltered shed that can protect from wind and rain. The sports ground must be enough to ensure the movement and life of each bird. The sports ground is connected with the bird house in a rectangular shape; the sports ground for the breeding birds and the shelter house should be at least 30 meters wide and 50-80 meters long, and the rearing area of each group of African ostriches (1 male and 3 females) should be 1500 square meters. The sports ground is paved with sand or grass, and no waterlogged depressions are allowed. There should also be enough green area and green fodder planting place outside the fence.
African ostrich rearing is mainly ground level rearing, and the ground is required to be clean, hygienic, dry and warm. When raising chicks on the cement floor with bedding, the bedding should be covered with sacks, breathable rubber sheets, or rigid elastic fine mesh plastic nets, etc., to avoid chicks eating the bedding. Chick houses and exercise yards should be cleaned, and glass, plastic sheeting, wire and other inedible foreign objects should be packed up. When chicks are kept in the house, add a small amount of grit to the feed to aid digestion. Add grit once a week, using about 1% of the day's feed. From the chick out of the shell to the 12-week-old growth stage, because the physiological function is not yet sound, extremely sensitive to changes in environmental conditions, so it is the most important and critical stage of breeding, requiring careful care and scientific management. African ostrich is an omnivorous bird, with special digestive function, can take energy from crude fiber. Therefore, when supplying concentrate feed, we need to pay attention to the supply of energy is not too high. If the energy supply of concentrate feed is high, coupled with the energy in the green feed, it will often lead to too much energy in the body and deposited as body fat, thus affecting the fertility.
African ostrich growth rate, metabolism is vigorous, before 10 weeks of age should gradually increase the proportion of roughage in the diet, in order to more effectively promote the establishment of microbial growth in the digestive tract after the activity area. With the growth of age, 10 weeks of age and then increase the proportion of green fodder in the diet, so that they can more effectively obtain nutrients from grass, thereby reducing feeding costs. The main green feeds commonly used are leeks, leafy vegetables, elephant grass, alfalfa grass, yellow grass, ryegrass and so on. Female ostrich in the breeding season estrus performance is also very obvious, the performance of gentle, active approach to the male ostrich, walking and bowing his head until his head almost touches the ground, hanging wings, while the two beaks quickly a close. After the male ostrich's courtship action, both wings are raised at the same time, and the female ostrich is approached quickly with broken steps. If the female ostrich accepts the male ostrich's courtship, the female ostrich will open and close her beak faster and quickly squat down, allowing the male ostrich to climb on her body for mating. The male ostrich climbed on the female ostrich, the left leg stands on the ground, the right foot gently placed on the back of the female ostrich, from the female ostrich's left lower part of the penis into the vaginal opening. At this time the male ostrich swings his head from side to side, and when ejaculating the male ostrich's wings shake rapidly. The mating time is 30-60 seconds. 1 male bird usually mates 4-6 times, and a few male birds can reach more than 6 times. Mating time is usually in the morning and morning, but also in the evening.
Female ostriches are generally 2.0-2.5 years old and sexually mature. Females begin to have nesting, nesting in the ground in the nest, 12-18 eggs per nest, eggs longitudinal diameter of 16-17 centimeters, 13-14 centimeters across the diameter, weighing about 1500 grams, the eggshell accounted for about 19.5% of the weight of the eggs, eggs smooth, creamy-white, with a luster of ivory-like, thick and hard eggshell thickness of 0.2-0.3 centimeters. Artificially reared ostriches such as its eggs removed, the female bird can be continuously spawned, generally every other day 1 egg, 12-20 consecutively, some can be 48 consecutively spawned before resting, generally resting for 6-15 days and then begin to spawn. The incubation period of seed eggs is 41-42 days.
When females first start laying, a considerable number of eggs are unfertilized. Generally, the first egg-laying period can produce 20-40 eggs, some high-yielding female ostriches after 3 years old can produce 40-60 eggs in one egg-laying period, and the excellent ones can be more than 80 eggs. Eggs develop in the ovary, female ostriches have only one ovary, located in the abdominal center line slightly to the left. From the anatomy of the ostrich, the ovary looks like a bunch of grapes hanging in the body cavity near the left kidney, on which there are many white and yellow follicles of different sizes. During the mating season, mature eggs are discharged from the surface of the follicles by rupture and fall into the mouth of the oviduct, where they enter the spiral-shaped oviduct. The follicle combines with sperm in the upper part of the fallopian tube to become a fertilized egg. The yolk is tethered by a thick yolk tether that equalizes the yolk. The yolk and albumen are the nutrients for the embryo. As the egg continues down the fallopian tube, it is covered with two shell membranes outside the albumen. The shell is formed by the secretions of the calcareous glands, and finally, an enamel layer is formed on the surface of the egg to give it a smooth surface. Soft eggs are caused by the inability of the calcareous glands to produce secretions outside the egg. After fertilization of the egg, the nucleus of the embryonic cell begins to differentiate in a short period of time, and the conjugate becomes more complex, which takes on the characteristics of both parents. As soon as the egg is produced, the embryo stops differentiating.
In captivity, it is uneconomical to let the ostrich incubate itself. Ostrich spawning is generally in the afternoon at 3-7 pm, spawning performance is better bird every other day l eggs, 12-20 spawn rest for about 1 week, and then start the next spawning cycle. However, high-yielding ostriches can continuously lay more than 40 eggs before resting, which has a great relationship with good feeding management. Low-producing ostriches or ostriches less than 4 years old and older ostriches lay eggs almost irregularly. The fertilization rate of breeding eggs is generally 60% to 90%. The brooding period is a prone period for various diseases and is an important period for the success or failure of rearing. Diseases that cause death of chicks in this period are mainly respiratory infections. Due to the chicks on the adverse environmental factors, especially on the humidity and dust is more sensitive, often due to dirty air, wet floor bedding, room temperature is too high or too low and induced respiratory infections, such as Aspergillosis, a series of respiratory symptoms, sneezing, coughing, etc., if found in time, and take appropriate measures to eliminate the causative factors and the use of antibiotics, the prognosis is generally good, or else it can lead to death. Therefore, in the brood period must have special management, 24 hours on duty, pay attention to the mental state of the chicks and the feeding situation at any time, find problems in a timely manner. The bedding in the brooder room should be soft, absorb moisture well and not easy to produce dust, to minimize the interference of stress factors. In addition, should be declined to outsiders, especially other poultry farms work into the visit, in order to eliminate the invasion of pathogens.
Breeding period this period of ostrich fastest growing, daily weight gain can be more than 0.5 kg. In this period of time the common diseases are anterior stomach sand disease and soft foot disease.
Anterior gastric sand disease is a kind of digestive dysfunction caused by the accumulation of sand in the anterior gastric stomach, which can lead to heart failure and death due to malnutrition. The cause of the disease is not clear, may be related to the lack of selenium and other trace elements in the feed. The main symptom is a reduction in food intake, followed by wasting. If it develops into abolition of food, it will die after 2 to 3 days, and the dissection can see that the foregut is full of sand particles, which weighs as much as 4 to 5 kilograms. The intestinal mucosa is congested. Myocardial atrophy, edema, and loss of heart fat.
The disease can be prevented and controlled by the following measures: ① Early onset of the disease can be implemented to limit the sand grazing, that is, in the sports field on the hard plastic sheet, to avoid direct contact between the ostrich and the sand particles. At the same time to improve the quality of feed, add selenium and other trace elements and a variety of vitamins in the feed, and give rich high-quality green material. ② in the frequent occurrence of the disease, more ostrich farms, every few days in the concentrate to add some light laxative such as paraffin oil, in order to promote the body of excess sand particles excreted in a timely manner, to prevent the occurrence of the disease. Surgery can be practiced for severe cases. In Shantou, there has been successful experience in surgical treatment.
Soft foot disease is caused by excessive growth, the body weight gain rate exceeds the growth of the foot bones and calcification of bone speed, so that the feet overloaded weight-bearing caused. At this time, on the one hand, to limit the feed ration to control the growth rate. On the other hand, add minerals such as calcium and phosphorus and multivitamins such as vitamin D to the concentrate to promote bone growth and calcification. It should also be verified that the exercise area is large enough and the daylight of the feedlot.
Adult ostriches have a strong resistance to disease. But this does not mean that breeding adult ostriches can ignore the epidemic. In Guangdong Foshan, Jiangmen, Shantou are imported from South Africa and bird eggs in the detection of Newcastle disease, avian dysentery mycobacteriosis and avian septic mycobacteriosis antibodies. That the ostrich has been infected with the above pathogens, only the adult birds did not see clinical symptoms, but its productivity of the ostrich is not a loss of direct information data at present, some domestic farms have been raised in the ostrich Newcastle disease occurs, resulting in serious economic losses, should cause the majority of camelid farms (households) attaches great importance to. With the ostrich captive breeding, feeding mode change, whether the above pathogen will pose a direct threat to the ostrich is still difficult to predict.
In addition, the adult ostrich can be difficult to birth. Mainly due to shock or environmental noise, such as the new ostrich farm or field near the infrastructure when the noise of the machine and so on. The prevention of this disease is to eliminate the causes, to provide a quiet, fresh air environment for the ostrich.