18 Emu Eggs and 3 Ostrich Eggs going for my first time... I am so "eggcited"!!!

[ES Emus]

Good points....but she might not have all those worries...they haven't even hatched.....and that can be tricky.....

She also said that they have a sanctuary with emus, so it looks like she may have a home for them if it becomes too much of a burden. We feed our adult birds two pounds of pelleted food per bird a day and I know how expensive that gets, I can't imaging having to feed that whole crew if they all hatched, plus they own chickens, ducks, turkeys and geese too!

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Two pounds a day! E.S. Gee, that’s a substantial amount/cost!

I get bags of ‘seconds’wheat – just smaller grains. My total yearly wheat bill is about a hundred and fifty bucks, and I give the birds handfuls of sultanas – probably less than a dollar a day all up for the whole feathered crew.

S.E.

 

[yinepu]

Two pounds a day! E.S. Gee, that’s a substantial amount/cost!

I get bags of ‘seconds’wheat – just smaller grains. My total yearly wheat bill is about a hundred and fifty bucks, and I give the birds handfuls of sultanas – probably less than a dollar a day all up for the whole feathered crew.

S.E.

two pounds a day per bird sounds about right..
Mine are eating more now than they were during the winter... which doesn't make any sense now that the trees are starting to bud out and the grass has greened up...


with all the birds we have.. we go through 600 to 1000 pounds of feed a week depending on the season

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

It is delightful to be able to tease all those whose emus aren’t on autopilot. From first to last light, my birds are out there, peck-peck-peckin’ away, industriously feeding themselves. I round up their dried blessings for the compost.

I still think the idea of a ‘swap’ is hilarious. We’ll put Felicity in a Comfy Crate, and ship her to you; do likewise with one of your birds; and monitor the results when each bird arrives in its new environment.

Of course, you wouldn’t do it ‘cause the transportation would be cruel; but the data obtained would be valuable. Watching the newly-released pet bird would be instructive: would it know how to range about and graze?

I suspect that Felicity would turn out to be a handful for the captive birds; but might not adjust in the mid-term. Certainly, putting Eric in an environment with pet birds would yield shocking results.

S.E.

 

[shanyalv]

Hi everyone, Thanks for all of the input.

I have not entered into this lightly. We have been doing a LOT of research on them and I do not intend to keep all of them when and if they all hatch. I already have people who are interested in owning them ( not lightheartedly either ) and have the means and the ability to take care of them. I really wanted to see firsthand how hard/easy it would be to hatch them and after turning that many eggs multiple times a day I will admit that next season I will just buy myself a nice large incubator to do the job for me.

In about 7 years my husband and I will be purchasing a ranch in South America, so this is all just an early head start to really getting my feet wet.

Feed wise my bills are pretty reasonable as we have local breweries that we can get our mash from and the other feed is available to us through a dealer that we can order it pretty much directly. Right now I do have Turkeys, Geese, Ducks and chickens. We have dogs that eat an ungodly expensive but excellent dog food and lots of fresh veggies that are available to us through a few garden co-op's and we treat them all as not only pets but a food source as well.

I have lost a few already in the incubator due to them seeping ( those happened to be the oldest eggs out of the batch) and the remainder of them all seem to be on track weight loss wise. I am also incubating the ostrich eggs and 2 of them were bad so I am down to two of them until I get some more tomorrow.

I transported them from about 400 miles away ( Pheonix to Las Vegas) they were all individually wrapped in paper and then placed into a large cooler which was left partially open during the trip. The person that I got the eggs from in Az has a rather large flock and has had pretty good luck with hatching them herself. My other ones literally came straight from the Emu's each day as they laid them so I know the source and only had to take them a few miles home.

I know that the general assumption is I am crazy... ( I kinda know that we are !!! ) but this is a lot of fun and I would rather have interesting fun birds to add to my flock than just my normal run of the mill chickens.

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Hi, Shanyalv!
By no means do we think you’re crazy (or, alternatively, we’re all crazy . . . ); but our ultimate concern is for the birds, and to that end, it may be that at times we seem like hard cases.
Emus live up to twenty years in captivity. If, somehow, every egg hatched, you have a half a millennium of emu-years on your plate. Stacked one on the other, they’d be 150 feet high.

Well, if you are well set up (is the brewery mash a balanced basic diet?), we look forward to observations on your flock. Even if you hatch just ten or a dozen birds, you’ll vault straight into the ranks of those with larger flocks.

Supreme Emu
Western Australia

 

[Grassman 52]

Shanyalv
Time for an update on your eggs - how are they doing? - have you lost any more due to leaking?

 

[Ellamumu]

I wouldn't want to feed more than one of these critters, my very spoiled Ella not only puts away her pellets everyday she also gets a pint of strawberries or blueberries every morning before I got to work and then when I come home at 4 to feed the rest of the farm she gets a snack of baby spinach or a head of chopped up broccoli. I own a restaurant so fresh produce everyday is not a problem, but 1 big birdie is enough! LOL

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Pellets and fresh fruit and fresh green veg: gee, that’s a great diet for a bird.

S.E.

 

[Grassman 52]

One thing that we must all keep in mind is that people have birds for different reasons:

I keep chickens, ducks, and geese - for the sale of eggs and meat. I have the land and the resources to breed and keep my birds.

So now I want to try Emu's purchased 34 eggs from 5 different sellers and will all be set by the end of the day tomorrow.

3 settings one week apart.


Now I have already lost 4 eggs to leaking and I clearly expect to lose at least half for one reason or another. My plans are to keep 6 birds to adults for breeding and to sell eggs - all others will be held for meat and oil. Now to get the 6 birds I require - I will need more chicks to cull down to the ones I want.

Back to my main point - not everyone will keep these birds for pets - they are considered livestock by some of us