What do Emus eat? Am I feeding him o.k.

[dawnaura]

I have an emu for 20 years now and he has never eaten any dry grain; he has always refused all types from ratite, to chicken feed to rabbit feed. All he has wanted for all these years is fresh produce and it is labor intensive, cutting up salads and fruit and canned beans or tofu or peanuts for protein. Also cooked brown rice for grain or crushed corn chips, popped corn. How come I am the only person who has an emu that won't eat dry grain? After 15,000 meals ( I feed him 2x daily), I am tired of this! I do love him, but the time spent preparing his food and the expense is alot. Help! Dawn Aura

 

[birdeo]

I have an emu for 20 years now and he has never eaten any dry grain; he has always refused all types from ratite, to chicken feed to rabbit feed. All he has wanted for all these years is fresh produce and it is labor intensive, cutting up salads and fruit and canned beans or tofu or peanuts for protein. Also cooked brown rice for grain or crushed corn chips, popped corn. How come I am the only person who has an emu that won't eat dry grain? After 15,000 meals ( I feed him 2x daily), I am tired of this! I do love him, but the time spent preparing his food and the expense is alot. Help! Dawn Aura

That bird has been spoiled, would be hard to change it's habits at this time but you can try.
Let it go without a good deal of those " treats" on a daily basis and leave the ratite/poultry pellets out for it also,
hence forcing it to not have much other choice but to eat the dry grains and/or graze a bit on other stuff.
The bird can go for weeks without food and it will, so this may take some time to see what happens.
Give it little to no choice to eat things such as produce etc. but of course don't let it starve while doing so.
That bird only has prob. only 10 more years left at the most , don't push it too hard but try to make gradual changes.

 

[briefvisit]

Lucky lucky bird! Birdeo's advice is great. Looking forward to hearing the outcome.

[Felicity tame-wild Emu is here today. She gets two double handfuls of wheat a day, and some sultanas. Otherwise, she's . . . wild.

She trots eagerly to her wheat in the morning. It's fine food for here.]

se

 

[77-Style]

Can anyone tell me how Emus do with Sheep, Goats, Cattle, Horses?

 

[briefvisit]

That bird has been spoiled, would be hard to change it's habits at this time but you can try.
Let it go without a good deal of those " treats" on a daily basis and leave the ratite/poultry pellets out for it also,
hence forcing it to not have much other choice but to eat the dry grains and/or graze a bit on other stuff.
The bird can go for weeks without food and it will, so this may take some time to see what happens.
Give it little to no choice to eat things such as produce etc. but of course don't let it starve while doing so.
That bird only has prob. only 10 more years left at the most , don't push it too hard but try to make gradual changes.

Wa ha ha ha!! Emus are v. hardy critters. Don't be afraid that Emooo will drop dead of hunger during the transaction. (I've seen an emu trying to eat fig-tree leaves at the end of a hard season.)

 

[birdeo]

Quote:
like I say, they can go for WEEKS without food !

 

[littlebiggfarm]

We kind of inherited our 3 emus from the previous owners of this property, the birds are about 18 or 19 years old, and the previous owners had only fed them the cheapest dog food from our local feed store. We have tried to give them other types of food (pellets, types of chicken feed, fruit, spinach and other greens) and they may take a bite or two but won't actually eat it. Soo I don't know if they are just used to dog food or what? I thought about mixing the dog food with pellets and see how that goes, but I just don't think it's healthy for them to just have dog food as their main food...am I right or is this ok? They seem pretty healthy and happy but I just want the best for them.

 

[Little Fuzzy]

I enjoyed your Emu posts even though I don't own one. What do you do with your Emus? Are they just pets?

 

[Emu House]

Hi, My pet female emu "Banjo" is 3yrs old and her diet consists of thawed peas (up to 3kg per day), sprinkled with egg biscuit (that's a bird supplement usually for aviary birds), and dog kibble (good quality) and mixed grain. She wanders the property and picks around in the paddock, but she comes back to the yards adjacent to the house when she's ready for a good meal which is usually 4 times a day. When the cicaders are buzzing around at the end of their life cycle, I gather those up for her aswell. We had a donkey on the property too, and interestingly enough, it appears the emu caught lungworm from the donkey. The donkey was fine, but the emu nearly died as we did not know what the problem was until it was almost too late. We treated her with Ivermectin and she recovered over a period of months, but her progressive deterioration (major weight loss and anorexia) was distressing to see. So if you ever see your emu coughing up thick spit-looking stuff which becomes slightly blood stained, you might consider worming it with some very effective parasite control and that might do the trick. I would hate to think any other emu might suffer as ours did because no one knew what the problem was. Vets were reluctant to travel out to see it, and they were limited to domestic pet therapies. It was a process of elimination really and when antibiotics and various other treatments failed to work, I thought to use ivermectin (the one used for over 25kg dogs). I felt I had nothing to lose because she looked as if she was going to die anyway. I used one application every week for 4 weeks. It saved her life ! She is now a proud-looking beauty once again

 

[briefvisit]

As fast as I can type:

she is indeed a fine specimen. I am fond of the sandy-coloured birds, which you may not know are rare in the wild.

[Would someone like to do a study of eye-colour and Roman-nose-ness? Banjo has a half a Roman nose. Number One the Emu's distinguishing feature is a Roman nose.]

There are scattered posts discussing augmenting emoooz provisions with stuff grown in their enclosures. I'd love to hear that someone is trying this: if there's any wet spot -- that holds moisture longer into summer -- one might try to set in motion some 'feral' -- self-seeding -- grasses or spinach? And anything that develops flowers and seeds. I suspect captive emu owners underestimate how many types of flowers and seeds the wild birds get. Felicity Emu almost always turns up here in spring because she loves the flowers of the 'Cape Weed' plant.

Grapes? (Adult wild emus punch their way so far into the feral grape vine here that all you can see is toosh feathers sticking out.) I note that, certainly at the tail end of summer (when wild birds may perish en masse) ANY ANY ANY sort of fresh greenery is great for their tum tums. This came up just recently, and others chimed in with my thoughts: emoooz gotta have greens for roughage.


The wild emus here at my place just luuuuuurv the fruit that falls from the trees left over from the orchard. This photo is just weeks old, of Eric and The Cheepers on Plum Patrol just behind the farmhouse. They stand waiting while the parrots knock down plums:




Finally, if you're not over budget, buy bulk packs of cheap sultanas. Emus luuuuuurv sultanas!