The life of Daryl the emu

[twoacrefarm]

Any update to share today? I've got my fingers crossed for Daryl 

Me too! Waiting here!

 

[pattyhen]

waiting for a Daryl update.

 

[mich9510]

Sorry about the wait on an update....
Daryl is still doing really well



I'm exhausted after a very busy weekend so I'm going to take a nap and post Daryl's incubation stats when I wake up.

 

[pattyhen]

Daryl is so gorgeous. Thank you so much for sharing his story and pics with us. I love emus. I live in the city and I can't have any but I would sure love to have one. I've subscribed to this thread and I look forward to seeing him grow up.

 

[Teila]

G’Day Dazza! Welcome to the World! [Well, the other side of the world

]

Subscribing

 

[N F C]

Sorry about the wait on an update....
Daryl is still doing really well



I'm exhausted after a very busy weekend so I'm going to take a nap and post Daryl's incubation stats when I wake up.

What a cool looking chick...love his stripes!

 

[mich9510]

If you remember from my previous posts, Daryl started out at 716g. I wanted him to lose 15% of his total weight which would be 107.4g total. This breaks down to 1.99g/day. Here's the breakdown of his weights.

Day of incubation Actual Weight (g) Weight Daryl is supposed to be (g)
Day 4 706 708
Day 8 693 700
Day11 690 694
Day15 684 686
Day 19 678 678
Day22 674 672
Day 26 668 664
Day 29 662 658
Day 33 654 650
Day 35 649 646
Day 37 643 642
Day 42 631 632 (wiggled today!)
Day 45 625 626
Day 48 622 620
Day 51 616 615

As you can see, Daryl stayed very close to the weight he was supposed to be as opposed to Rick who was all over the place with his weights. This led me to believe that Daryl was developing properly but I couldn't be sure until he wiggled at day 42. This leads us to the issue of egg candling for emu eggs (or lack thereof). You can't candle an emu egg. They are too dark. I have read that you can do it with an infrared light and night vision goggles. I do have night vision goggles but no infrared light. I tried to candle the eggs with a regular light and the night vision goggles but I couldn't see anything. I tried using the IR setting on the night vision goggles but still wasn't able to see much either, just a red or warm center,

So how can you tell if an emu egg is developing? My experience is that the only way is to actually see the egg wiggle. Some people say that after a few weeks you can pull the egg out of the incubator and if one end stays warm after a few minutes, there is likely a developing embryo. This is because the embryo is capable of generating its own heat. This is easy to be fooled on. If you think about it, the entire egg is warm whether or not the embryo is developing. I can tell you that both Rick and Daryl stayed warm. It was only until the last two weeks or so that I realized a live egg will stay significantly warmer. There is also a tap test that can be done. A live embryo is supposed to sound like tapping china (tink, tink) and a dud is supposed to sound dull. That's a tough one too. I imagine that someone with some experience hatching emu eggs would be able to tell the difference but I could not. So the only thing I could do was watch the eggs for a few minutes when I took them out to weigh them. Rick never wiggled. Daryl wiggled every time starting at day 42.

The last time I weighed Daryl was on day 51. They went into lockdown at day 49 but Since I was concerned about moisture loss I weighed Daryl one more time. I took care to keep him in the same position while I weighed him.

My next post will be about the pipping experience. There are some changes to humidity that I read about and decided to employ.

Thanks for reading!

 

[mich9510]

Has anyone seen this yet? I wonder if it would work for emu eggs?



Are you in the dark about egg candling?

Welcome to Avitronics. The home of Buddy - the worlds first digital Egg Monitor. The Buddy concept was conceived by a very frustrated parrot breeder who wanted to monitor the development of eggs beyond the candle method - especially when nothing could be seen by candling. Buddy was designed by an electronic expert who specialises in designing and developing instruments for the veterinary world. Buddy has now been made available to anyone who's interest is in the field of bird and reptile keeping or breeding.

Click to Buy Buddy
So simple to use, buddy
takes away the wondering
and the worry of egg
management.
Buddy does NOT come with a Mains Unit -
These can be purchased separately from us.
We would recommend using a mains unit
as the battery life has a short expiry.

You can clearly see that this egg is OK.

But what about this one?

 

[briefvisit]

If you remember from my previous posts, Daryl started out at 716g. I wanted him to lose 15% of his total weight which would be 107.4g total. This breaks down to 1.99g/day. Here's the breakdown of his weights.

Day of incubation Actual Weight (g) Weight Daryl is supposed to be (g)
Day 4 706 708
Day 8 693 700
Day11 690 694
Day15 684 686
Day 19 678 678
Day22 674 672
Day 26 668 664
Day 29 662 658
Day 33 654 650
Day 35 649 646
Day 37 643 642
Day 42 631 632 (wiggled today!)
Day 45 625 626
Day 48 622 620
Day 51 616 615

As you can see, Daryl stayed very close to the weight he was supposed to be as opposed to Rick who was all over the place with his weights. This led me to believe that Daryl was developing properly but I couldn't be sure until he wiggled at day 42. This leads us to the issue of egg candling for emu eggs (or lack thereof). You can't candle an emu egg. They are too dark. I have read that you can do it with an infrared light and night vision goggles. I do have night vision goggles but no infrared light. I tried to candle the eggs with a regular light and the night vision goggles but I couldn't see anything. I tried using the IR setting on the night vision goggles but still wasn't able to see much either, just a red or warm center,

So how can you tell if an emu egg is developing? My experience is that the only way is to actually see the egg wiggle. Some people say that after a few weeks you can pull the egg out of the incubator and if one end stays warm after a few minutes, there is likely a developing embryo. This is because the embryo is capable of generating its own heat. This is easy to be fooled on. If you think about it, the entire egg is warm whether or not the embryo is developing. I can tell you that both Rick and Daryl stayed warm. It was only until the last two weeks or so that I realized a live egg will stay significantly warmer. There is also a tap test that can be done. A live embryo is supposed to sound like tapping china (tink, tink) and a dud is supposed to sound dull. That's a tough one too. I imagine that someone with some experience hatching emu eggs would be able to tell the difference but I could not. So the only thing I could do was watch the eggs for a few minutes when I took them out to weigh them. Rick never wiggled. Daryl wiggled every time starting at day 42.

The last time I weighed Daryl was on day 51. They went into lockdown at day 49 but Since I was concerned about moisture loss I weighed Daryl one more time. I took care to keep him in the same position while I weighed him.

My next post will be about the pipping experience. There are some changes to humidity that I read about and decided to employ.

Thanks for reading!

A couple of years ago, Mitch, we wished we had more stats on emmoooo-chick growth. So this is valuable data!

Here are Eric and The Cheepers in my garden last week. Eric is tame-wild. The chicks are surprisingly auto-tame.

[If you are observing in the wild -- and my backyard is effectively the wild -- you are lucky to know the chicks' age pretty well. So this photo was mid-January, so these chicks are about 18 weeks.]

http://imgur.com/a/qNYqL

 

[mich9510]

@briefvisit ,

Those are some beautiful chicks! 18 weeks, wow they grow fast!