Pyxis' Emu Chat Thread

[N F C]

Not to upstage Pyxis; but here is one:

I had this cocky little rooster here when my 'original' three chicks were young adults. And this rooster was full of himself. And the hens followed him around: 'He's my rooster.'

So anyway, one day, I hear 'screams' from the rooster. A bunch of noise -- could hear it in the house, fifty yards away.

So I mosey over, and here's Greedy Emu in the chook pen (chicken coop), down on her hocks, complacently eating the chooks' food, and Mr. Tough Rooster, backed up against the wall in the far corner of the pen, screaming, 'Get it out! Get it out!'

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['Greedy Emu': one of only ever two 'double-alpha' birds. Missing, believed dead. Female rothschildi ]

Must have been a real blow to the rooster's ego!

 

[briefvisit]

 

[biophiliac]

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Thank you! That looks fresh?

 

[briefvisit]

 

[briefvisit]

 

[briefvisit]

Poopology Report: contents of a poop, and a roost poop


Pardon me lecturing, but those of you with pet emus can still learn a surprising amount if you develop the habit of looking hard for data, and cross-referencing what you get.


So, the top photo is a roost poop. Found among the gums. Once you get the hang of this, you can stand in a pasture (that you know emus are grazing on) in the middle of nowhere, and likely find a roost poop in under ten minutes. Wild emus usually roost about thirty yards in. So you start walking through the timber about thirty yards parallel to the open area. That’s how I found this one.

And a roost poop doesn’t fall as the poop of a standing bird does. Hence not splatted into the ‘pat’ we normally see in the open. Even if you somehow found a roost poop in the open, it’d be readily identifiable.

And if you get down reeeeeaaaal close, you will almost always find a feather where the bird’s breast rested during the roost. I once found a recently-abandoned roost (I was out pre-dawn over at the National Park) on grass under a tree. You could quite clearly see the shape of the bird’s body where it had roosted on the short grass. Clear outline.

 

[briefvisit]

Second Photo: the gum-leaf platter. Three larger objets d’emu visible. The two on the left are immature plum seeds. The one on the right is the ‘button’ out of the middle of the Cape Weed flower.


Third Photo: the rest of the same poop. So, if you were truly serious, you would dismantle the poop to retrieve the constituent bits. Wash those. Put them on a clean white surface. And then start crawling around the pasture on your hands and knees, cross-referencing the parts of the poop with the plants growing in the pasture. Somewhere there is a bit of data on this (when we were observing chicks Alpha and Omega). I showed readers just how many types of grasses, etc. really are in a pasture.

Note that you could tell the time-of-year of this poop by the maturity of the plum seeds. In just eight weeks, they’ll be mature seeds.

 

[biophiliac]

Yikes! Impressive. Why don't we see the white urates in the roost poop like other birds?

And Poopology, is that a real word? I thought it was my own invention.

Thanks again @briefvisit for your sharing your excellent first hand observations!

 

[casportpony]

Do emus have cecal poop like other fowl?

 

[aart]

Do emus have cecal poop like other fowl?

Probably....but it's fouler...hahaha!