Our family journey to the ostrich farm!

When you have a baby under 2 you hardly have much free time and opportunity to travel somewhere far away from your home. Especially if it's a cold winter behind your window. But anyway, fresh air is very useful for everyone and for the baby in particular.
It was a cold (-10°C) Saturday morning, January 19, when we decided to make a little family journey to the ostrich farm (Kozishche, Brest region, Belarus) in about 20 km from our town. This farm is the only one in Belarus, the greatest one in CIS and one of the largest one in Europe and was founded in 2003.
After putting warm clothes on and taking good expectations with ourselves we set out at 9.10 a.m.

Our road looked like this:

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Starting our journey with giving a lift to a stranger we warmed up even more!
After a whole night of hard snowing our roads were cleaned very well, it was very pleasant to see! Our road laid along lots of trees, from one side there were living houses with nice gardens, from another side - fields with frozen ponds and plenty of high old trees and bushes. When we were going more closely to our final destination we were surrounded by scenic landscape of our Belarusian winter forests, it's magic! Firs, birchs and other trees seemed to be dressed in silver attires, so impragnable and cold.

 

It took 25 minutes to get by car to the road sign "Ostrich farm, 1 km".

We were invited by a nice poster with ostriches painted on it.

Welcome to the ostriches world!

This picture with southern birds among our winter forests looks so funny!

One minute - and we've arrived!






When we came to the farm we were warmly welcomed, and farm workers were surprised to see visitors in such a cold day. But yeah, it was our wish to see southern birds in winter. By the way, ostriches bear cold weather very good, strong southern birds!
We were asked if we wanted to have a dinner after excursion ('cause it takes some time, of course, to cook a fresh dinner, you know), we rejected the invitation, we didn't plan to stay here for a long time because our son was going to fall asleep in the afternoon.

"Welcome to the ostrich world" poster

The store

 

We looked around (very nice yard!) and went to the store where we bought our tickets (about 3 $ for a grown-up, little 1.5-year-old kid - for free :)). The store is another story! Here you can find various products out of ostrich skin, plumage, oil, etc. Looks really nice! We were warmly invited to rub our hands with cream out of ostrich oil for free (natural cream protects skin from over-freezing and it worked, by the way!). Smells good and has effect all the day!

  

What can be better than a happy and glad kid? :) (with cut daddy :D on a picture)

When we've just arrived to the farm we were the only visitors. But once we were ready for the excursion a large bus with about 10-year-old kids appeared at the farm gate. So, they made us a noisy company! While they were buying the tickets we went to a very cozy cafe with a fireplace there to warm and look around.

   

Humble me :)

It's a really nice cafe. It's not a problem if you don't order anything, you can just stay here as long as you want.

(Just for curiosity - some prises: ostrich fillet (100 g) - 3$, ostrich liver (100 g) - 1$, ostrich shashlik (1 kg) - 23$.)

So, kids were ready and we started our excursion! And here they are - speedy and tall birds - running from their homes to show themselves to us! Here a short video recording with walking and dancing ostriches special for you:

Ostriches are very strong and fast birds, they can run during 20 minutes on speed in 50 km/hr! Have you ever heard that ostriches hide their head in sand when they're scared? It's myth! If they're scared they start running fast, though ostriches forget the reason of their fear fast the same way. We were told an interesting story about this fact. In the silent morning ostriches were scared by noise made by a car passing by. They started running on farm workers... Only because of flashlight on held by the workers ostriches have recovered, calmed down a little and stopped running, and people stayed alive! Ostriches may be 2.5 m tall and 150 kg of weight!

Ostriches' ancestors were able to fly and nowadays ostriches inherited fragile bones from them, so if they break their bones they will hardly survive in spite of their strength... On video you can see a dancing ostrich. It's how ostriches-males show off in mating season :)

 

  

Besides ostriches, we met other animals there! We moved further and saw dear with their incredible eyes which, it seems, look right into your soul.

 

By the way, dear are very good photo-models! :)

That was a surprise for me but then we met camels!! Here, in cold winter, camels! But camels have warm fur, so they're not afraid of freezing :)

 

Our nice guide with an egg in her hand

We moved further closer to the incubators and we were told some words about ostrich eggs. An egg length can reach 21 cm, its weight can reach 2 kg (it's like 36 chicken eggs!). Egg shell thickness is 0.6 cm! If a life was born in an egg it goes further, to the incubator. If not - to the kitchen, for omelets and other dishes.

Ostriches don't need to incubate their cubs - here all conditions are  made for that.

In this time our little kid was permanentely frozen and he with his grandpa went back to the cafe to warm a little and to eat some cookies with a cup of tea :)

I with my husband moved further to see the first ostrich in this farm named Vasya! :D Surprisely, but it responds to this name!

Our way to Vasya and my husband's back :)


Vasya is the closest one to the windows

It was an amazing feeling to see these birds at arm's length, so near!

It was the last point of our acquaintance with ostriches. We went back to the cafe and the first word i heard when we had entered the room was "Mama!" :)

The main idea is to hide cookies deep inside your mouth so noone will take them away!

Son was already warm and felt pretty good with cookies in his hands. We were sharing our impressions of this journey to the farm and drinking warm tea. When i had started telling about Vasya and everything that my dad missed going away to the cafe, a man sitting at the table near ours proposed us to see something we were not shown (the reason why he did it: we had a little child). Wow, we were really excited! Of course, we agreed!

We were taken to the administrative building and shown ostriches very closely. They are so funny! When you walk close to them they stand still pretending they are not here :) Standing so close to the ostriches i started being jealous, because they have so long eye lashes! (kidding!)

 

A little further we saw sheep! Hahaha it was so funny to tease them saying "beee" and they responded! :) Look at them!

And then - a hourse and a jackass! I'll never forget these sad, and deep, and like asking for sympathy horse's eyes...

We all were already frozen and it was time to finish our journey, so we moved to our car fast. While everyone were making theirselves comfortable in the car i made some photos of our Belarusian winter forest!

 

 

In front of the farm

A little tired but satisfied with our journey and breathed enough fresh air we've set out back home at 11.15 a.m. Next time to visit this place - in summer! It was a really nice journey and if you're searching for new impressions and like not expensive rest combined with great nature, you're welcome to this Belarusian ostrich farm!