Easter is all about eggs – lovely yolky ones for breakfast, or cheeky chocolate ones hidden all around the garden for small people to seek.
- Did you know that in Britain we eat around 11 billion eggs a year? Boiled eggs are most popular.
- Eggs are an excellent source of protein and contain essential vitamins and minerals
- Fresh eggs sink in water; stale eggs float
- People have given eggs to each other in springtime for centuries as a symbol of new life
- You can easily buy free range hen, quail, duck and goose eggs at farm shops across the UK but ostrich eggs, the largest of all, are trickier to come by!
The ostrich is mightier than the hen
One ostrich egg is equivalent to 24 hen’s eggs – that’s a lot of scrambled egg on Easter morning. If you like your traditional boiled egg and soldiers you may need to be patient. An ostrich egg takes around an hour to soft boil and a drill or hammer is recommended for opening it! Females lay around 60 eggs a year.
Ostriches, native to Africa, do indeed lay the biggest egg in the world – each egg weighs around 3 pounds (1.3kg), or since we just had the Masters’ Golf in Augusta – for any golf fans out there that’s the weight of around 32 golf balls, and measure 6 inches (15cm) in diameter.
The eggs are incredibly strong, having to bear the weight of an adult ostrich during incubation which is 42 days. The female sits on the egg by day and the male by night. The largest recorded ostrich was nine feet tall and 156kg, so an adult human is really no big deal and can stand on one without risk of it breaking. On a visit to an Ostrich Farm in Oudtshoorn in South Africa, my twin children thought this was a great game.
On holiday to South Africa, you can indeed visit an ostrich farm, such as Cango, where they run regular 45 minute tours which are very child friendly and interactive with the chance to touch and feed the birds and even sit on them as well as learning about the farming process and their life cycle. Children enjoy seeing the chicks (who incidentally grow a mighty ten inches per month until they are seven or eight months old so I really shouldn’t complain about having to buy new school shoes for my two!). As well as producing eggs, they are also prized for their feathers, meat, which is low in cholesterol and leather. You can even witness ostrich racing.
A male ostrich is called a rooster or a cock and can be identified by his black plumage with white tips and red beak. A female is called a hen and has light grey/brown feathers and is slightly smaller. Ostriches can live for more than 50 years. Although they can’t fly, they can run at speeds of 40mph. They are unique in the bird world having only two toes instead of the usual three or four.
If you prefer to see yours running free then you’ll be pleased to hear that ostriches thrive in the wild and can be seen on safari throughout Africa.
If you are interested in visiting South Africa as a family click here for further info along with sample itineraries including those that visit the Oudtshoorn area. To explore our range of South Africa trips and safaris click here.
All the team at Real Africa join together in wishing you all a very Happy Easter.
By Sara White