Male or female

[Klah59]

Hello, how can you tell a male emu from a female? Is the drumming only for the females or both? I’m getting two in the spring.

 

[Pyxis]

Drumming is female only, but females may grunt, which is the male sound, before they are mature.

Mature females develop a kind of hanging 'bag' on their chest which is where they generate the drumming sound.

Here you can see the hanging bag on the chest that females get:

And here a male, no hanging 'bag':

For juveniles, though, the only ways to sex are either to vent sex, which is hard to do if you don't know what you're doing and you could also injure the bird, or to send off for DNA sexing, which you can do with feathers or blood. Or if you're getting chicks, you could ask the breeder to save the eggs and send those off for testing instead.

 

[briefvisit]

Correct, Pyxis -- Hi!!
But most of what you see hanging in the photo of the female is puffed-up feathers. The sac is 'in under' the feathers.

SE