“There’s nothing more beautiful to me than the male ostrich standing upright, opening up his wings, and seeing that movement of the feathers. It’s something you don’t get with any other farmed animal,” says South African farmer Laubscher Coetzee.
A fourth-generation ostrich farmer in the Karoo town of Oudtshoorn, Coetzee, 62, started out as a child, raising day-old ostrich chicks on his great-grandfather’s farm. Since then, his life and passions have been inseparable from the birds.
Hundreds of farmers in semi-arid Little Karoo, in the south-western coast province of Western Cape, raise ostriches – the largest of all land birds – for feathers, leather and meat.
Nicola Klue with young ostriches on her parents’ farm. At one point in the late 19th century, ostrich feathers were more expensive by weight than gold
Ostrich feathers have fascinated people for centuries. Once, the birds were hunted across Africa on foot and horseback for lush plumes to adorn the heads of Europe’s regal and rich.
Then, in the 1800s, farmers in South Africa developed a way to domesticate the birds and incubate their eggs. This new farming industry was propelled by the arrival in Oudtshoorn of Lithuanian Jewish immigrants who helped to instigate a booming feather trade.
By the 1880s, ostrich feathers were so coveted for women’s fashion that, at one stage, they were pricier by weight than gold. Oudtshoorn attracted dozens of “feather barons” who built palatial homes. But after 1914 the industry plummeted as the economies of wartime changed fashions and the invention of cars made the plumes impractical to wear.
Clockwise from top left: ostrich feathers are sterilised in a factory oven at Klein Karoo International; feathers are dyed, washed then dried in giant drums to fluff and inflate them; workers sort feathers into 17 categories in order of market value; Klein Karoo’s feather sorting and sizing workshop
Yet ostrich feathers never lost their luxury appeal. Today they are sought after for cabaret and theatre productions, festivals, and by haute couture brands in Europe. Importers look to South Africa, which supplies 75% of all ostrich products globally – mainly from Oudtshoorn.
Ostriches are ratites, meaning they cannot fly. Unconstrained by the need for smooth, rigid flight feathers, they evolved fluffy plumes to woo mates. Another trade-off for flightlessness is a pair of powerful legs that can run at 60 km/h (37mph) and kick forcefully enough to kill an adult human.
Laubsher Coetzee with a female ostrich on his Oudtshoorn farm, which covers 820 hectares
To temper these tendencies, Coetzee makes sure his ostriches are used to humans from the moment the birds are born. His son, Jacques, hand-rears all chicks, as he once did: “He’s got a feel for the animals,” Coetzee says. “He can almost whisper to them.”
Coetzee also gives the birds space. Across 820 hectares (2,026 acres), he raises 8,000 chicks and juveniles annually for sale to surrounding farms, keeping a steady population of 600 breeders. These roam in enclosures large enough to enable flocking and courtship rituals, which sees the males dramatically fanning their black-and-white feathered wings.
Gathering feathers, from males and females, relies on the ostriches’ natural shedding cycles every eight months. You can tell a feather is “ripe” when the blood vessels and nerves detract from the shaft, and it dries out to “become almost glassy”, Coetzee explains; this is the most humane time to start gathering.
Workers in the sort-and-size shop at the feather factory in Oudtshoorn. One adult ostrich generates about a kilogram of feathers every harvest
Farm workers herd the ostriches like a flock of sheep, then steer individuals into a low triangular enclosure called a bok to shield against kicking. A blindfold keeps the bird calm while teams of four people stand on either side. In about five minutes, they hand-gather the soft, fluffy body feathers (called blondines) and clip away the longer wing feathers.
Soon, the plumes resprout. One ostrich adult generates about a kilogram of feathers every harvest, and farmers are paid by weight. Coetzee says he’s careful not to over-trim his birds, to protect them against increasingly harsh climate extremes.
Blondine and tail feathers are carried to a factory. Prized ostrich wing feathers are sold for carnival outfits, theatre and fashion
The Western Cape has recently experienced prolonged droughts. Ostrich are desert-adapted birds, yet drought paired with 40C-plus (104F) summer temperatures have killed several of Coetzee’s birds. He has since installed shade tents and provides more water for them.
Another threat plays on Coetzee’s mind: feather bandits, keen to cash in on the expensive plumage. In 2019, raiders broke in and stripped feathers from 25 of his ostriches before they were ripe, killing one female in the process. “I’m nervous for my birds because they are close to harvest,” Coetzee admits.
Clockwise from top left: Hilda Ketula with her nephew, Innocent Khumalo, in her workshop, Mama’s Feathers; the sorting of tail and body feathers; Hazel and Saag Jonker in Oudtshoorn. Saag has 10,000 breeding ostriches, 160,000 chicks and 50,000 adult ostriches; Ketula’s baby asleep in the workshop
Bandits aside, he should fetch a decent price for this season’s feather harvest, which he sells to Cape Karoo International (CKI), an Oudtshoorn-based co-operative established in 1945 to manage the processing and marketing for approximately 250 local ostrich farmers.
Coetzee’s business relies on keeping a flock of live birds to gather feathers from. Other farmers rear birds for their meat and leather, the highest-value productfrom which plumes are taken as a by-product. Some also supply eggs: ostriches lay about 60 annually, and those not reared as chicks are emptied and sold mainly to Germany for Easter decorations.
A Klein Karoo employee empties eggs to start the process of turning them into decorations. One egg weighs between 1.2kg and 1.8kg
Birds raised for their leather are slaughtered at nine months, and their hides stripped of feathers. Together with plumes gathered from live animals like Coetzee’s, these are ferried to the feather department where they are sterilised, dried and meticulously graded by type, size and quality.
Body feathers are crafted into feather dusters (1.5m of them), or stripped and dyed to make thousands of boas for export. The prized and more expensive wing feathers are sold for carnival outfits, theatre and fashion.
Kurt Zaza, aka drag queen Madame Zaza, in the studio of the Showbizz Shop in Lokeren, Belgium. Together with owner Marisa Allen, he creates feathered costumes for drag queens, cabarets and revues across Europe
“We feel proud to see people wearing them,” says feather boa-maker Lureen Estcourt, one of 20,000 people working in the South African ostrich industry, which provides jobs mainly in the country’s more deprived rural regions.
Feathers are a conduit to a glamorous world for Sabastian Meyer, marketing and sales manager at CKI, who counts the costumers of the Moulin Rouge in Paris as a longstanding client. “We’re like family. They came to visit us and we’re going there!” he says.
Karoo-bred wing feathers are crafted into cloud-like headdresses for the springtime Carnival of Binche in Belgium, and other plumes go to the only remaining feather factory in the UK, Jaffé et Fils: maker of specialist creations that have included set pieces for the Harry Potter films, fluffy Scots Pipers bonnets for the military, and boas and fringes for Strictly Come Dancing.
Clockwise from top left: Ben Jaffé in the ‘steam’ room of the family-owned Jaffé et Fils factory, the only establishment in England to dye, process and supply feathers; the company’s feather-dyeing workshop; Jaffé in the drying room; Gillian Jaffé sits in the firm’s feather painting room
The size and volume of ostrich plumes provide a versatile canvas for a creative feathermaker, explains Ben Jaffé of Jaffé et Fils — ideal for trimming and shaping, dyeing and curling: “You’re not going to find anything remotely as large or as fluffy in any other bird.”
Back in Oudtshoorn, Coetzee ponders where his feathers go. “Many times we see a woman in a beautiful dress with ostrich feathers, and we wonder how many of those come from our farm.”
Export manager Eleonora Corri with a coat of ostrich feathers in the workshop of the feather sorters Minardi Piume, Lugo, Italy
