Emu or Rheas, own some?

[secuono]

Crazy new thoughts.

Rheas are smaller, but far less common. Are they containable in 4ft fencing, like emu, when hand raised & tame?

Anyone breed to eat them, either one?
How do you get them to brood, maturity age, how long before you butcher? Heat needed for chicks?

How many do you need to be happy?

What should they eat?
I've read different things to feed when you can't get ratite feed, like layer pellet mixed with rabbit feed.

Can they live with other animals?

 

[Baymule]

At the height of stupidity a breeding pair of emus sold for $40,000. When the bottom fell out, people turned them loose. They can disembowel a person with one kick. What the heck do you want with them?

 

[thistlebloom]

I had a neighbor a long time ago whose boyfriend gave her two eggs to hatch out. At that time the eggs were$600 apiece.
The emus escaped her property one time and they were heck to catch. They are possibly the dumbest animals on Gods earth.
She had wood rail pasture fencing around all the pastures, with a hot wire along the top. The emus got shocked constantly and never learned to stay away from it. She asked the vet what to do about it and he told her to let him know the next time it happened and he'd bring the BBQ sauce.
I would not advise keeping them with other stock.

 

[secuono]

At the height of stupidity a breeding pair of emus sold for $40,000. When the bottom fell out, people turned them loose. They can disembowel a person with one kick. What the heck do you want with them?

Alpaca sold for 50k plus.

Curiosity.

 

[secuono]

I had a neighbor a long time ago whose boyfriend gave her two eggs to hatch out. At that time the eggs were$600 apiece.
The emus escaped her property one time and they were heck to catch. They are possibly the dumbest animals on Gods earth.
She had wood rail pasture fencing around all the pastures, with a hot wire along the top. The emus got shocked constantly and never learned to stay away from it. She asked the vet what to do about it and he told her to let him know the next time it happened and he'd bring the BBQ sauce.
I would not advise keeping them with other stock.

Ginormous chickens, they also don't learn(hotwire).

 

[secuono]

They're expensive and totally new, so I won't jump into keeping them blind.

Hoping to figure them out, IDK why people keep them, besides for the novelty of it.

 

[thistlebloom]

They're expensive and totally new, so I won't jump into keeping them blind.

Hoping to figure them out, IDK why people keep them, besides for the novelty of it.

You must mean Rheas, because emus have been around for 40 years.

 

[secuono]

You must mean Rheas, because emus have been around for 40 years.

New to me, either one. Biggest bird I've kept is Peking duck.
Still expensive, 200-400 an egg or unsexed chick, when I did a quick local search.

 

[YourRabbitGirl]

Crazy new thoughts.

Rheas are smaller, but far less common. Are they containable in 4ft fencing, like emu, when hand raised & tame?

Anyone breed to eat them, either one?
How do you get them to brood, maturity age, how long before you butcher? Heat needed for chicks?

How many do you need to be happy?

What should they eat?
I've read different things to feed when you can't get ratite feed, like layer pellet mixed with rabbit feed.

Can they live with other animals?

Emus are generally very gentle birds and generally are friendly, depending on how they are raised. ... We have never killed any of our emus, they were our pets. The exception to this is the rheas. The male rheas are very aggressive and can be dangerous.

 

[Finnie]

A long time ago, I stumbled across the Ratite section over on BYC, and started reading some of the threads. This one in particular was interesting and informative:

Emu pictures and stories.... post them here

Please join me and post your emu pictures and stories here. My dear friend, The Sheriff, sent me a surprise package; 3 emu eggs! I incubated them. Day 50 came (March 10, 2012), and I was shocked that 2 hatched (one was a stinker and tossed out). The first one out waited patiently for the...

www.backyardchickens.com

There were a few other ones that followed some people’s hatches, and another especially interesting one was by an Australian guy who lived in the boonies and documented the lives of the semi-tame wild emus that inhabited his property.

It was all very fascinating, and made me kind of wish emus were a possibility for me. I would suggest reading some of the threads about emus on BYC and see if you don’t learn everything you might need to know. That will either convince you to get some, or confirm why not to. I’ll try to see if I can find that guy’s threads. He had about 3 different user names there over the years since he kept losing his old account information.