Ostriches laying early or late?

In the last few months our rangers have discovered stray freshly laid ostrich eggs. On a bush walk with guests we were thrilled to stumble upon a complete nest of eggs. This unusually late for this time of the year as nesting season is from March to September, and most chicks have hatched by now.

Ostriches mate for life and share the task of incubating eggs. A communal nest will hold anything from 14 to 60 eggs, each one being 15cm long and equivalent to 24 chicken eggs. That’s a big omelette!

The male has black feathers and he will sit on the eggs at night. The brown feathered female covers them during the day. Eggs take approximately 35 to 40 days to hatch, and the male takes the responsibility of looking after the young chicks.  The flightless ostrich is the world’s largest bird.