In ostrich farming, gastric diseases are usual causes of increased mortality and economic losses. Infectious and non-infectious pathogens can damage the gastrointestinal tract, affecting the digestive process. Gastric impaction may be characterized by anorexia, cachexia, dehydration, apathy, decubitus, and dry and reduced feces. Chronic anorexia result in progressive loss on the reproductive pe...

The topography of the thoraco-abdominal viscera in the ostrich was studied in 20 birds varying in age from 2 weeks to 12 months. The lungs occupied the dorsal third of the thorax, and the heart lay in the cranioventral thorax perpendicular to the long axis of the body. There was no pleural cavity. The liver was situated in the caudoventral part of the thorax, and the proventriculus occupied the...

A large incomplete ostrich femur from the Lower Pleistocene of North China, kept at Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle (Paris), is described. It was found by Father Emile Licent in 1925 Nihewan Formation (dated about 1.8 Ma) Hebei Province. On basis minimum circumference shaft, a mass 300 kg, twice that modern ostrich, obtained. The bone remarkably robust, more so than recent, Late Pleistocen...