Alliance Agro Developers

Anna Nagar West, CHENNAI-600040, INDIA.

Phone: +91 44 26157778 Mobile: +91 99406 57777.
WEB:http://allianceagro.com E.Mail: info@allianceagro.com

Ancient birds

Emus belong to an ancient group of flightless birds known as ratites, which includes the cassowary,
the kiwi, the ostrich and rhea. Ratites are one of the earliest offshoots in bird evolution so have a
special place in evolutionary studies.

EMU OSTRICH CASSOWARY RHEA KIWI

The Emu is common throughout much of inland Australia except for dense rainforest and
areas that are waterless or highly urban.

The most likely place to see them, though, is open pastoral country. They’re very inquisitive birds and
are the source of many tourist stories about the swallowing of keys and bits of cameras.

In Queensland, around the Warrego and Bogan rivers, Aboriginal hunters would lure emus by climbing
a tree, lowering a ball of Emu feathers and rags and twirling it rapidly. The fascinated emus would
gather near the tree and be speared from above. They need to be lured because there is no way to
catch up with an Emu. At speeds of up to 70 km/hour, emus really can "run the pants off a kangaroo".

Emus are also good swimmers. They love water and on a hot day like nothing better than a cool dip in
the creek, the dam, the horse trough or even under the sprinkler.

Pairing up

Male and female emus start pairing up around

December or January - anytime after the summer
solstice on December 21-22. Emu courting is a lively
affair. The sound alone is said to be unforgettable.
The birds, particularly females, fill their throat
pouches with air to make a drumming sound, which
can be heard hundreds of meters away.

Feathers are fluffed and there is a lot of dipping and

ducking, grunting and bobbing around. The males
may also fight, chasing each other away from
females by powerful frontal kicks.
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Anna Nagar West, CHENNAI-600040, INDIA.
Phone: +91 44 26157778 Mobile: +91 99406 57777.
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Broody Blokes

Around April, as the days get noticeably shorter, mating begins. In some parts of the country, mating is
also timed to start just before the rainy season. If the rains are late then the emus will delay breeding.
The reason for this link is yet unknown.

Emus are very seasonal. University of Western Australia researchers have found that short days
(photoperiod) depress the bird’s appetites, particularly the males, and trigger hormones that stimulate
their breeding.

The pair mate every day or so, with the female laying an egg every 2 or 3 days, until a clutch is
formed. Most clutches have about 8 to10 eggs but can go as high as 20.

After about seven eggs the male gets 'broody' and sits on them for the entire incubation period. It
takes 8 weeks (56 days) to hatch an Emu chick! During this time he doesn't eat or drink - just lives off
his fat and any nearby dew on the grass. The only time he stands up is to turn the eggs, which he does
10-12 times a day. The father also stays and looks after the chicks for up to 18 months, leading them
to feeding areas and showing them what to eat.

Shabby female behavior: the girls take off

As soon as the male goes broody the female stops mating with him, although she often continues to
lay eggs in the nest. These eggs, however, can be fertilized by other male emus. One survey of 106
chicks showed 51% were not fathered by the nesting male! Eventually the female leaves the first male
altogether. She may mate with one or two other males after the first one and can have up to 3 nests
per season, especially if the rains have been good.

Masculine sacrifice

The broody male loses up to a third of his body weight and becomes increasingly dazed and forlorn. Its
thought he could be in a state of ketosis - when the body’s metabolism burns only fat it produces
ketones which are toxic. Incubating
males also experience a rapid fall in
testosterone. By midsummer, though,
males are able to aggressively protect
their young.

As to the advantages of breeding in

autumn-winter, this means that the
chicks will hatch two months later in
spring, when the weather is warmer and
there is the best chance of food being
around.

The chicks begin to hatch as early as

June and as late as the beginning of
September. July and August are
generally the peak times. In the wild
there is a very high predation rate on the eggs but scientist Stephen Davies says if the chicks manage
to hatch out they then have about a 70-80% chance of reaching adulthood.

Chicks grow very quickly putting on 1 kg/week at first. They reach their full height when they’re about a
year old, but don't breed until their 2nd year, at about 20 months.
Alliance Agro Developers
Anna Nagar West, CHENNAI-600040, INDIA.
Phone: +91 44 26157778 Mobile: +91 99406 57777.
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Survival in a hot dry land

Emus are well adapted for living in a hot dry land. Unlike other animals such as kangaroos, emus
remain active even in the hottest parts of the day, foraging and walking. Scientists Shane Maloney
and Terry Dawson have found that the emu’s two-tone plumage gives them very clever protection
from the sun. The trick is in the colour.

The black tips of Emu feathers absorb large

amounts of heat from the sun, but the rest of their
plumage then keeps that heat away from the bird’s
skin. Only about 2% of the solar radiation that hits
an Emu gets through to the skin. Any wind then
convicts the heat in the feather tips away from the
bird.

The emus walking speed, about 1-2 meters/sec,

provides just the right amount of breeze to remove
this absorbed heat. Without their feathers the heat
load on an Emu on a hot day would be more than
they could dissipate and they would soon succumb
to heat stroke.

The reason that you can't see emus

breathing on a cold morning

Emu’s noses are well adapted for saving water. They have large highly folded passages called nasal
turbinate. Cool air breathed in, passes through these passages and is warmed on its way to the emu’s
lungs. But warming up the air causes the emus nose to get colder. So, when the Emu breathes out
warm air, it travels back through the emus cold nose, gets cooled and water condenses. The water is
then reabsorbed into the body.

In the hot times of the year emus often use a different strategy ñ panting into keep cool. They increase
the rate of their breathing which in turn increases the amount of water evaporated from the Emu into
the air. This cools them, but does mean the Emu must drink regularly.

Emus can pant for hours without getting light-headed from low levels of carbon dioxide (alkalosis).
Humans trying the same thing would quickly be out for the count.

Their diet in the wild varies quite widely. They like green autumn shoots, winter herbs, seeds, and
some fruits and flowers. They’ll eat insects when they’re available, such as grasshopper plagues.
Green shoots of wheat and later on ripe wheat are also regarded favorably. They need to drink every
day.
Alliance Agro Developers
Anna Nagar West, CHENNAI-600040, INDIA.
Phone: +91 44 26157778 Mobile: +91 99406 57777.
WEB:http://allianceagro.com E.Mail: info@allianceagro.com

Emu Farming
Emu farming took off in Australia in 1988 when the West Australian government permitted the
Aboriginal owners of Willuna Station to sell Emu chicks to the public. (Emus are protected and no one
is allowed to take birds from the wild.)

With a legal supply of chicks, both Aboriginal and non-

Aboriginal people began to develop Emu farms and find
markets for Emu products. In the early 1990s the industry
boomed but high set up costs and limited market outlets
have since cut the industry back to a much smaller size.
There are around 160 Emu farms in Australia, with a total of
about 32,000 emus.

Emu farmer, Kip Venn, says 5,000 to 7,000 emus makes a

reasonable sized farm. Also, Kip says that with a stocking
rate about 5 emus/acre, they’re so easy on the land you
can't see where they've been.

Some farms like Kepis are free range - the emus are
allowed room to roam. He puts 20 emus per 4 acre pen,
and lets them choose their own mate. Initially some farms
farmed more intensively and 'force paired birds' but high
food and labor costs have lead to a more open range
approach.

On the Vennís farm about 80-90% of eggs successfully

hatch. Rather than the male sitting on the eggs, many farms incubate the eggs and rear the chicks
separately. Foxes and other pests can be a problem if eggs are left in open.

Emu products include meat, oil, leather and feathers. Most Australian states have at least one
specialist Emu abattoir.

White settlers in Australia used to hunt emus for their

meat and their oil, which they used in lamps.
Outback housewives made omelets from their eggs,
which they first broke into a basin and let stand
overnight so they could skim off the oil which rose to
the top. The eggs weigh about 650 grams - over half
a kilo. If you’re cooking with them the rule of thumb is
1 Emu egg equals about 10-12 normal chicken eggs.

Emus were made extinct in Tasmania in 1865 by

settlers and sealers who killed large numbers for
food. They're also extinct on Kangaroo Island and
King Island.
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Anna Nagar West, CHENNAI-600040, INDIA.
Phone: +91 44 26157778 Mobile: +91 99406 57777.
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Emus on the move

Emus move to keep contact with food supplies. Some

people call them migratory but 'roaming' or 'nomadic'
is more appropriate.

In Western Australia there is a definite movement of

emus southward in winter and northward in summer.
At this time emus will travel 900-1000 km this is most
probably tied to rainfall - they follow the green grass.
West Australian scientist Stephen Davies thinks they
may use cloudbanks to navigate.

All birds move except incubating males. Barriers like

rabbit and Emu proof fences have made these migrations much more difficult. However by adding
extra watering sites for domestic animals in more arid areas, pastoralists have probably helped emus
to stay longer in some areas before going south. When they’re on the move emus don't like to travel in
big flocks. It’s unusual for them to be in groups of more than 20, except when they hit artificial barriers.

Migrations in Eastern Australian don’t seem to be as easily defined, although eastern emus certainly
do travel in response to seasons. In the drought of 1992 there were many reports of emus swimming
across the Murray River!

Wheat Farmers v Emus:

Wheat trampling by emus is a problem. When

wheat is ripe it's less flexible. Western Australia
has a 1,100 km Emu proof fence stretching from
around Esperance in the south to north of
Geraldton which keeps them out of the wheat belt.
It was built in 1901 and occasionally when emus
move out of the pastoral areas south westward in
winter they mass along the fence. As many as
70,000 emus have been known to die at the fence!

Once in 1932 the army was also sent out with

machine guns to decimate the numbers. In the
past, Queensland emus were thought to aid the
spread of prickly pear and many were shot there
too