Did you know you can get Emu eggs in the mail?!? LOL!

I think you should name it Gleep. I don't know what it's from, but it's a good name.

How are their dogs getting to the chickens? I don't remember what the pasture was fenced with. If it was fenced with barbed wire you may want to consider to refencing it with cattle fence.

Another option will be fencing in an area to let the chickens roam. If you choose this option I would suggest the galvanized metal or fiberglass roofing run 3 ft high from the bottom all the way around. You could also cover that with chain link fencing. Don't be surprised if you need to bury it 2ft all the around. Get dogs on a good one track thought and they may dig under the fence to get the chickens.

We found out a long time ago that when most folks get property that dogs can run on , they forget the fence to keep them from running on yours too. We've had to kill over a dozen of our neighbor's dogs over the years. We tried the local pound and the Sherrif's office but so many are allowed to run without borders you are left with little choice than to take matters in your hands. The same goes for cats here too.

When I bred rabbits I always had problems with neighbors dogs. We had a 8ft high wooden fence up and two dug under it to get in. I found a massacre that night. Rabbits were pulled the bottom of ripped hardware cloth , legs had ripped skin etc. Not a single one was eaten. The dogs killed them and left them laying where they dropped them.

The saying " Fences make better neighbors " seems to fall on deaf ears more and more these days.

Two weeks old.

I learned something new about emu this week. They can play dead. REALLY CONVINCINGLY play dead!! Like say~ when you want to wash the emu poop off the emu’s feet (because maybe it lives in your kitchen for some bizarre reason) so you hold the emu feet under the tap water. The emu will struggle (flinging emu crap off it’s feet across the kitchen~ next time do this procedure in the bathroom!) Then~ flop over DEAD~ limp neck, limp body, mouth agape. You give the emu a little shake and it just flops. So………..well……..now would be the time to panic right? So at this point one might yank the emu out of the water and shout:

“OH GOD I KILLED IT!!” Then it will sit up~ blink and I swear I heard it say “Nanner-Nanner-Boo-Boo!” just before it bit me. Again. (yes~ it still bites)
Sorry I didn’t get a pic of that~ I was too busy panicking because I thought I killed it~ then I was trying to talk myself out of killing it for scaring the snot out of me.

It’s more than doubled it’s body weight in just the 7 days since I last weighed it. We may not be feeding it right~ but it appears we are feeding it enough! We still have not gotten the emu feed in. Special orders are slow. I was worried it was not getting enough protein in it’s diet of whatever I could find that it would eat~ so since it had turned into a pig I decided to hold out until it ate turkey feed like I wanted. I stopped cutting up all the goodies~ instead I mixed some water and turkey starter mash and left it in the crate.

When I came back there was a perfect little circle of green emu poop in the middle of the bowl of turkey mash……….I’m not kidding. Again~ I should have taken a pic but I was busy so I scooped the poop out and gave it back to the little son of a gun!!!!

It really does not like turkey food…….but apparently it does like DOG food


The picky little cuss doesn’t like ALL the dog food though. Apparently the yellow pieces are better. So it picks through slinging brown pieces of dog food across the kitchen and eating the yellow ones.


BUT~ brown pieces that have been IN THE DOGS MOUTH taste pretty good though~ so it sits next to the dog bowl and bites So-Chee every time she gets a mouth full of food~ causing her to drop those delicious pieces of dog food that had been IN her mouth!
So-chee has begun grabbing a mouth full of dog food and running across the kitchen with it to eat it! LOL! She is SUCH a good sport. She gets LOTS of treats for letting the emu pick her teeth and NOT using the emu to pick her teeth!


The little cuss really asks for it too~ last night it bit her toes until she curled all her feet under her body. Then the little son of a gun took a shot at her eye! I walked her out of the kitchen and gave her a treat for letting it live………
This morning I started giving it a gentle kick (more a shove) with my foot when it bites me. I’m hoping we can teach it to stop that before it gets to be really painful or So-chee decides it needs to learn the lesson. I thought about moving So-chee’s food out of the kitchen~ but I really want her to learn to be accepting and tolerant of livestock and pets that may be less than polite in their behavior……so poor So-chee has a new dental hygienist for the foreseeable future!


So~ it’s been two weeks………
Who else is joining the Emu in My Kitchen Club? Who’s hatching an egg next?

LOL!!

If only I could!!!

Sounds like a barrel of fun!!!

Do you think I could pass this off without my apartment manager finding out? They don't make much noise, right?

not yet~ but it craps 30-60 times a day (it lives in my kitchen~ I've learned to love Bounty~ "the quicker picker upper"!

I tried to warn ya about the poop Cheryl, lol....

And the poops of course get bigger as the bird does....my emu's piles rivaled that of any cow I've seen.

But they are so cute.

I'm gonna have to look back and see if I can find some of the pics we had of Bart....that was back in the days before we had digi cameras, lol. He had the prettiest blue eyes.

I beleived you too Cat!
I'd love to see pics of Bart if you can find them~ meanwhile~ this weeks update for anyone who's still bothering to read this........


3 weeks old

It’s been another week. I know there were a lot of you out there claiming you were going to get an emu egg when you saw this one hatching…..so?.......well?.......come on now~ it’s not so bad having an emu living in your kitchen. It only craps about 30-60 times a day. The whole family volunteered to help take care of it after all……………

LOL! Are y’all laughing as hard as I am? You don’t think that’s a sign I’ve become unstable do you? Well…..not anymore unstable than one has to be to allow an emu to live in her kitchen right?

So~ it is 3 weeks old today. Even I have to admit it’s getting cuter:


It’s also getting BIGGER. MUCH BIGGER already! That’s the egg it hatched out of (I washed and saved the egg~ I want to glue it back together……if I EVER have free time again)


The emu food finally came in~ I’m going to pick it up on Saturday. I hope it likes it~ but if not it seems to be doing fine on dog food and cabbage/kale/lettuce free choice all day.


I’m already dreaming of building it a hoop house and moving it outside. Won’t that be great? It will be~ trust me. I keep the emu poop off the floor (LOTS of bounty and Clorox wipes!) but still! I locked it in a cage on Monday so I could mop the floor~ and I almost took a picture of my clean floor…….because I knew that was going to be a fading memory in short order!

It actually made me feel bad too. The little monster has decided I’m it’s parent~ so it panic’s when it doesn’t know where I am. Squalling and throwing it’s self into the child gates over the kitchen doors. Monday when I let it out of the cage it’s little beak was a bit torn up from rubbing the cage bars and it insisted on being with me or laying down at my feet all night. It’s really hard to be disgusted with it and want to get rid of it when it’s being all pitiful and sad……………

THEN it learned to leap the boards over the kitchen door (that’s when the child gates went up) and make a break across the house…….chirping all the way ~ I swear it sounded like giggling as I tried to snatch the weaving and bobbing little cuss!!! And it’s FAST already!


On the biting front~ apparently it can be taught. Water didn’t do the trick~ but pushing it over seems to have. It doesn’t bite me nearly as often as it used to~ unless I make the mistake of letting it get a shot at my watch. The little thief can not resist jewelry (all you ladies with expensive jewelry should come visit right away).

It’s stopped biting the cats~ they hit back (and one of the cats has claws!)


But poor So-chee………she doesn’t retaliate and she gets bit a lot! I’d actually let her give it a little lesson like I let the cats~ but I’m just as glad she doesn’t yet. I keep trying to explain to the emu that annoying So-chee by putting your head IN her mouth may NOT be conductive to continued good health……..but he doesn’t seem to get it and So-chee spends a lot of time looking like she just can’t get that annoying taste of emu out of her mouth. She takes it~ and apparently dog hair tastes almost as good as whatever is stuck in the dogs teeth……..

“It’s biting me AGAIN!”


I’m really very pleased with what a good dog So-chee is becoming~ she certainly puts up with more from that little emu than any one else in the house will! Now……do you think I could teach her to scoop emu crap?

Those are great pics (and narrative!) Cheryl!!! I love it!

As for hatching one myself, eh....I think I'll continue living that thought vicariously through you.

I'm going to make digging up those pics of Bart (one of) my projects for this weekend.....if I have time. If I remember correctly, they were all REALLY close up shots of him, because the camera was kind of shiny and reminded him of expensive jewelry, perhaps lol.

SOOOOOOOO CUTE!!!!!!