Emoo Questions Sorry I ask So Many!

[507382]

Hey guys,

I am now hearing NOISES from my emus. The problem is, at ten months old, some make a pig noise (yay ! female!) and they ALSO make a deep bass like noise. How can they make both? Are they confused lol... I thought it would be easier to tell them apart! Any tips for gender-related-noises at this point?

Also, does anyone else have emus that scare over dumb things such as:

-A raven in the compost
-a foreign truck driving by
-certain butterflies
-a jet flying in the sky
-thunder storms (good god that was 18 hours of emu-freaking-out-hell and Sayid scraped his neck pacing)
-after a good long bath


They start pacing, and even if ONE is scared, the others tend to eventually follow suit until they're basically tripping over each other pacing the same 12' of fence area? I tend to put them away in the barn when this happens and even in the barn it's wood so I worry about their necks getting scraped as they continue to pace(as ALL of them have had this happen over the course of their short lives and are still recovering).

So.. yeah... Emu calm-down tactics?
Or does this just happen as they're instinct driven birds?

They don't listen to me when they spook! At all! And it's hard to put them away, especially the culprit. I try to lead them to the barn and they turn around suddenly or else they try and kick when I'm guiding them back. It's an awful chore. I'd say, by far the worst trait they have is being spooked so easily!

But, as a side note, they are wonderful delightful darling dears and we love them so much.
The best part of my day is letting them out each morning and watching them do happy dances in the field and every few days they run laps. crazy, "Oh no be careful! hey don't run into ___"
but still hilarious laps.
They also seem to love me so much more now and we're such a flock. Er. Mob. And we sit together in the grass and are one big happy family. I just wish they weren't such scaredy cats!

 

[ButtonquailGirl14]

Sorry about this! @Pryxis

 

[ButtonquailGirl14]

@Pyxis

 

[briefvisit]

'I am now hearing NOISES from my emus.'

I enjoy answering this question:

all emus make almost all emu noises. At times, they burp, fart, hiss, and grunt (and cheep).

And I get to tease non-wild emu observers because some of the identifying comes from context, like the conversations of breeding-pairs, or the unique inter-territorial vocalisations of a female commanding a territory.

So, in their second year, emooz shift from baby noises to adult noises. And to definitively identify an individual as one sex or the other can take a while. I have been in error months at a time on several occasions.

But ultimately one thing gives it away:

only the female has the vocal sac. And you can see its distension during 'foomphs.' (And feel it under your hand if you are patting her while it is inflated.) And the foomphs happens in strings. (Limpychick, for example, although as yet a real wooos of a female, manages the longest strings of early-a.m. happy-emu-female foomphs I've ever heard.)

Thus the male vocalisations -- 'guurks' -- are not definitive. A female can gurk. She just usually won't. But, certainly at certain times of year, like the male of a breeding-pair in autumn, the males will go on a guurk rampage, and once you've recognised this, you'll never be confused again.

SE