Hatching emu chicks in homemade incubator

[beck2325]

I have built an incubator using a cooler and have 4 eggs in the incubator, hand rotating 180 every day, eggs tracking for between 12 and 16% weight loss(using a digital postal scale that I don't think is too accurate). Temp is in celsius on the pic of the controller on the outside. I hold 35.8-36.1 with the set temp at 36c. Pic inside is the 4 eggs inside with a pc fan with standoffs to allow air to be circulated across the incubator with a fan ptc heater combo on the left. Whole thing runs on 12v dc (because I live off-grid and 12vdc is more efficient than dc-ac-dc). I labelled the eggs 1-4 with arrows to know how to turn them for whatever side they are on lol. I'm on day 51. Egg one internally pipped last night and is still rolling all over the place chirping. Egg 3 is not far behind just as active but not pipped yet. 4 is wiggling but not as much and egg 2 is either a tiny bit of wiggling or not anything. Hard to tell when you are watching it very closely and start to think a breeze is movement as you hope it is ok.

 

[beck2325]

We have 1 egg hatched and one now that internally pipped. It is a bit early for them to hatch at only 51 days for the first one....our first emu we ever hatched was day 62! Has anyone had eggs hatch later than 62 or earlier than 51?

 

[beck2325]

Should probably add a few pics. Going by how the head pattern looks we think female but maybe when the feathers fluff out a bit that might change lol. Idk how accurate the head pattern is but our last emu was female and the head pattern matched exactly what it was supposed to be.

 

[beck2325]

This is just now a pic of her after half a day under the heat lamp. Funny how they sleep with their heads in crazy positions. I swear she is alive lol. She scoots around already and as you can see she had one of her first poops. Ruining her baby blanket already.

 

[beck2325]

Oh before I forget, egg 3 has internally PIPPED as well. So that is 2 eggs out of 4. Egg 4 is now the lazy one and egg 2 is the one wiggling.

 

[JoJoM]

Very cool!! Do you already have emus?

 

[beck2325]

Very cool!! Do you already have emus?

Yup. We have a single female. She is always laying down puffing out her butt feathers really wanting a boyfriend if you know what I mean lol. That is why we had this round of eggs, emus need to socialize no matter how much attention. And she can stop presenting herself to every human she sees lmao.

 

[JoJoM]

They are so awesome. Do they make good pets? I know of a farm not far from me that have them, I don’t really know much about them. Will the female accept these little ones or does it take careful integration? (Sorry for the questions, I’m fascinated by giant birds!!)

 

[beck2325]

They are so awesome. Do they make good pets? I know of a farm not far from me that have them, I don’t really know much about them. Will the female accept these little ones or does it take careful integration? (Sorry for the questions, I’m fascinated by giant birds!!)

Well normally females are the more aggressive ones and ours is very friendly, but she is attached to who she knows most people she is fine with but there are some that she just outright doesn't like and will start hissing at and puffing at. She is very good at being a guard bird. We used to take her for walks down our dirt road and the last time we did some moron with pit bulls left them off their leashes just hanging around their yard and they thought they could come and intimidate us and she was not having it. She puffed up, stood up tall with head facing down and hissed at them ready to stomp them out, but I held her back and the dogs didn't know what to do about a huge bird and they started backing away as if to say "screw this, I'm not dying from big bird" lol. Honestly I don't think it is bad raising them but I must say hand raised vs raised by emus is a big difference. We tried to buy an emu chick from a person who lets the emus hatch and raise them and they were PETRIFIED of ppl to the point where when we picked one up all it would do is scream and poop, then scream and poop some more. Then when you thought there couldn't possibly be anything left...it pooped some more. Needless to say, never buy anything other than hand raised if you have to. But best is to hatch yourself, so you know your bird from the start and it imprints on you. (Plus you get to do some whistling convos with them when they are in their egg which is always entertaining to say the least). They are smart and we trained ours on berry cheerios (granted all she knows is sit, come, and lay). Yes, you heard me right, she has a cheerios preference for treats lmao.

 

[beck2325]

Oops, forgot to answer your other question. Yea, integrating will take time. She will want them around her size so at least 6months old and then slowly getting her used to them then getting them in the same enclosure. We want to get eggs out of her and she probably never will if there isn't a male present.