Feeding Emus commercially

[walkingcrow3]

We are buying a expensive brand high energy dog food because I have a jack russell mix who needs it too. What I have been doing this week is mixing smaller amounts of the dog food in with the mazuri feed and I think it is working and they are eating more of that instead of the dog food. Since I am buying a 50lb. bag of dog food for $40, times that with 3 emus and it is gone in no time.

 

[JanesMom]

yeah yeah yeah.. heard it before.. even the "specialist" ratite feed from Mazuri is lacking.. I'll take the experience of the hundreds of emu ranchers in Texas who were raising thousands of emus as to what works feed wise and what doesn't.. the proof was in the hatchability and health of the chicks as well as the health and reproductive vigor of the parent stock.. and those ranchers found that for the first year a 50/50 mix of rabbit pellets and layer pellets out preformed all of the commercial diets for healthier chicks.. and once they hit the 1 year mark switching them over to a calf creep feed resulted in healthier more fertile adults which produced extremely healthy chicks.. 
So yeah.. I'll go with what works instead of fancy marketing to make a buck anyday!

This conversation is quite old, so I was wondering how that feeding plan worked out for you.