Our newest adventure, EMU's!

[KsKingBee]

We are no strangers to raising fowl; we have chickens, ducks, damn guineas, pheasants, and about 500 peafowl. We came across a coming three year pair of Standards and couldn't resist buying them. I hate and joke about newbys buying birds unprepared but here we are.

We live on 160 acres and have Valais sheep, our new emu are accustomed to sheep and goats, chickens and dogs so they have no fear of the other animals and share a paddock and barn with the sheep. The emu are very friendly and eat from hand and don't mind being petted. (I so wish there was a stickies index for emu...)

I'd like to get some advice on how emu interact with each other. Limu wants to be with Mumu but she takes one look at him and he will crawl over the four foot field wire to get away from her then paces the pen to get back in only to go through this time after time. Monday evening he went on a walkabout and came home Wed morning, tired and hungry. Put him in the pen and out he comes, so they now have separate paddocks.

I understand we are coming into the breeding season so I am wondering how to proceed? Should I just let him climb the fence when she decides she wants to breed? Limu is the one with the blue head.

 

[briefvisit]

'stickies index'?

 

[KsKingBee]

'stickies index'?

Yeah, like in the Peafowl forum, at the top of the page there are a list of informative topics, threads pertaining to genetics, health and medications, housing, etc.

 

[briefvisit]

'I'd like to get some advice on how emu interact with each other.'

Well, I am wild-emu-observer guy. So ask away

Supreme Emu, Lake Muir, Western Australia

 

[briefvisit]

Well, here’s a start: in the wild, male and female emus form breeding-pairs plus-minus late summer. Then they seem to have a sort of ‘honeymoon,’ during which they travel about together.

[This is absurdly simplistic.]



Then, around plus-minus mid-autumn, they will find a nice patch of bush/pasture, and begin trying to establish dominance. If the pair is powerful enough, they will establish a fairly sound ‘command’ of their territory by early winter.



The next stage, towards mid-winter, is that you may observe matings. The female can lay fertile eggs for a week or more after a mating. Then one day (if you are observing here in the wild) the male will disappear – he has a nest full of eggs somewhere in the bush, and he is incubating.



Note about Space: the following we’ve discussed many times:



the dynamics of emu life -- access to water, access to pastures, access to extra yummy food sources, gaining command of a territory to breed on – involves plenty of emus to choose from, and running away if the bird you’ve encountered is more powerful.

Pet/captive emu owners sort of don’t see this aspect. They think in terms of one or two or three or four emus, and put them in a paddock, and voila, baby emus! But I am fairly sure that it is not automatic that a male and a female kept together will mate – I look forward to your observations.

 

[briefvisit]

file:///C:/Users/Mark/Desktop/20250903_085220.mp4

 

[briefvisit]

This is 'Limpy Chick.' He and his partner, 'Offsider,' bred here last winter, and turned up in mid-winter with ten chicks. (Seven surviving nine weeks later.)

We can observe Limpy Chick because he himself was a chick whose Dad brought him here when he was little. The chicks will eat sultanas from your hand.