young emu poop

[megs0330]

This site has been very helpful with the care of our two young orphan emus - papa was killed by a coyote. They are growing, happy, eat a lot and poop a LOT. I think I may be overfeeding them, I give them about 1/2 cup chopped veggies 3 to 4 times a day, and they always have starter crumble available. Is their poop always so runny? our adult emus poop is far from firm, but it's not watery either, and the babies poop is pretty liquidy. Any help is appreciated !!

Megan

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Poop naturally ranges between complete-plop-splatter and firm enough to have the little swirl on the top.

You often enough see a liquid stool, which would surely suggest an imbalance if it continued.

If the chicks are energetic, and have space in which to exercise, and are eating heartily, things can’t be too wrong – at least interimly.

Lots of breeders here – the ones with real experience in this – talk about working hard to get a good balance of nutrition over the long term.
[Google ‘Swarbrick’s Emu Husbandry Guidelines’]

Chicks have awesome appetites.

Supreme Emu

 

[ES Emus]

Megan:

How old are your chicks?

 

[megs0330]

The chicks arre just over two weeks old-

 

[ES Emus]

your poop is normal for chicks that age! They should have starter feed available to them continuously for the first three weeks. After three weeks of age, only feed them twice a day as much feed as they can eat in 20 minute spans. We supplement their feed with chopped up collard greens as a treat and as an extra souce of vitamins and minerals. Their poop will firm up as they get older.

 

[yinepu]

you'll also get "wetter" poo if they drink a lot.. birds in the wild that have to travel a good distance to get to water would naturally have much more solid poo.. but captive birds who have water 24/7 can drink to their hearts content. As they age though it should firm up.

If it turns odd colors or foamy then there's more of a concern (unless color change is from their diet .. like suddenly eating lots of dark colored berries)..

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Hey, Yinepu, I've wondered for ages about the amount-of-water-type-of-poo thing. Yah, makes perfect sense.

Supreme Emu

 

[megs0330]

Excellent info, thank you! They seem to be moving towards eating more of the starter right now too, and less of their veggies.

Another question - we have two adults left (Papa was killed remember) and we were told that we had two females and only one male. Well, we KNOW the male was killed, and the two we have left are SO different looking that we started to believe we actually had a male and female left. The one is much smaller than the other, does not have a blue throat, no air sack puffs out, etc. But just now I could have sworn I head that smaller one do the drumming noise - is it possible that it is indeed a female and just less mature than the other one we have that we know is a female? We didn't know anything about these, they were rescues, but we are having fun learning !

thanks- Megan

p.s- the babies are growing like crazy !

 

[ES Emus]

that is very possible!

 

[Tame Emu Guy]

Megs,

lots of information about emus that is on the Net – and therefore often in general circulation among us – is just not true:

‘different looking’: emus vary far more as individuals than as male or female. Among the dozens of wild birds around here, I see differences in body-feather pattern, size and shape of toosh, ‘collar’ of neck feather, ‘hairdo’s,’ pattern of colour on wings, colour of neck skin, eye colour, general posture/personality, etc.

‘much smaller than the other’: same thing, Megs: although most birds are pretty much the same size, it’s not uncommon for a bird to be smaller for some reason – a runt. I can’t usually guess which of a pair is the female. I can think of a number of pairs in which the male is heavier. (Felicity figures below. She is smaller than her consort.)

‘air sac puffs out’: hmmm . . . the air sacs don’t stick out like, say, a frog when it puffs up. Let’s get more opinions on this.

What Defines a Female?: eventually, a bird will raise some ruff, pull its neck back to the ‘swan position,’ and sort of ‘hunker down,’ then produce some number of absolutely unmistakeable booms – female!


Here is Felicity doing it last winter:



[Felicity is, in this photo, a four-year-old rothschildi female. She is wild, but will eat from your hand.]

Spend an hour on Youtube, like ‘Blue Neck Emu,’ and you should find some clips that help sort all this out (though I couldn’t easily find one of a good female boom. ‘Love is in the air’ has a medium boom).

Wow, how weird is this! I looked for some Youtube clips for Megs. The first one had a female doing a low-key drumming. Felicity heard it, and boomed quietly at the ‘threat,’ and came to the living-room door to check it out -- 'Where is that female? on my turf??!! I'll whup her!!':