4 D Acres

Okay, so it’s not snap, crackle, pop, but in the spring, we eat, sleep and breathe the whistle, crack and hatch. You see, it’s hatching season.

The whistle begins about a week before the cracking, but the story begins long before that, so let’s start at the beginning. Here at 4 D Acres, the breeding season begins in September and lasts through May. It is during this time where our best hens and their male counterparts let the magic begin. Within days to weeks, the hens begin to lay eggs and our ‘round the clock work begins. The eggs are laid after dark, so we must check the pens during the night so that the eggs do not freeze in the cold weather or are not pilfered by predators. Once an egg has been taken from the pen, it is weighed, assigned a number for record keeping and then placed into refrigeration at 45°F for 30 to 45 days. A batch of eggs is then brought to room temperature before being placed in our floor-model Hatchrite incubator at 97°F and 33% humidity.  The eggs stay here until the hatching begins, approximately 52 days. Our incubator maintains the ideal temperature and humidity level and even rotates the eggs, so unless an alarm sounds signifying a change in ideal conditions based on external factors, all we have to do is check the water reservoir for proper levels and fill as necessary.

Whistle: About a week before an egg is ready to hatch, the most amazing thing happens. If you whistle at the egg, it sometimes starts rocking as the baby chick responds to the sound, and every once in a while, it whistles back!

Crack: One of the most exciting things for us to see is a tiny shell fragment on the floor of the incubator as it means that the hatching has begun. That egg is then placed into a hatcher, where the hatching process takes anywhere from one to two hours, and up to twelve hours. If the chick has some difficulty hatching, we must resist the temptation to help the chick out of the shell. Much like a butterfly coming out of a cocoon, the emu chick must exercise survival muscles including the pipping muscle that does the majority of shell-breaking work.

Hatch: Once the chick is completely hatched out, it is again weighed, sexed and tagged. Then it goes into the brooder box with all the other hatchlings, and does not come out of there until we see that it eats, drinks, and poops, - basic survival skills.

From newly hatched chick to sexually mature adult, it takes eighteen to twenty four months, and the birds are kept in areas accordant with their age, generally recognizable in their height.

This year, in addition to all the other chores that it takes to run a farm and a household, the hatching and brooding season will keep us constantly busy as we go through two phases, the first hatch planned for the beginning of March with sporadic hatching finishing out the first batch under our careful vigilance. Our second phase will begin in May and hopefully by summer, we are on to a whole different season at 4 D Acres.

While there is no snow currently on the ground at 4 D Acres, and there has only been a light dusting of snow earlier this winter, we wanted to share the answer to what is a common question in the winter.The question is regarding emus in the snow, although often phrased in terms of comfort, behavior, or special needs.

The snow does not actually bother the birds. If it has not snowed in a while, they are leery to walk in it at first, but soon make their way to the open air of their outdoor pens, and are thereafter not affected. We make sure they have adequate shelter available that they can access at will. We have noticed that they will seek shelter when the temperatures are below freezing and there is a strong wind. The emu will often stand, unbothered, under a snowfall until they have a couple of inches on their backs. While their feathers are not waterproof, they do have a layer of fat just under their hides that insulates them and keeps them warm.

One might think that the emu, originating in Australia, might be accustomed to only warm temperatures. It does get quite cold and even snows in Australia. Their seasons just mirror ours. The emu acclimates itself as the temperature changes, but a sudden long-distance transfer of location might disturb them, because of temperature, humidity, air density and air quality factors.

Even when the weather is quite cold, the birds love to be hosed down with water. They are also quite unaffected by any ice accumulation on their feathers. The emus walk carefully when there is ice on the ground. The emu could slip and fall and potentially break a leg if there is ice on the ground, but they seem to manage, walking carefully so as not to slip and slide.

Christmas always brings back memories of a day in the life of an Emu Farmer. It was an early, early Sunday morning, about a week before Christmas. Temperatures were in the mid 20’s as I woke at 2:00 am and headed into the other room to wake one of my sons. It was time to get dressed and ready to take a trip to North Central Kansas where we would be picking up some birds from a farmer who had decided that he was ready to retire from emu farming.

After meeting another emu farm couple who would also be getting some birds, picking up my other son, and stopping to have breakfast, we pulled into our destination about an hour after sunrise. Maneuvered into is more accurate as the roads were heavily rutted and the farm road was tight for 2 trucks and trailers.

After the sun rose, the air and ground temperatures started to rise quickly into the upper 40’s, so the once frozen ground now became a mud pit. After slipping on a fence panel buried in the mud, I fell and twisted my knee, while a fugitive emu escaped from the trailer back into the pen, using me as a launch pad.  We slipped and slid as we corralled and wrangled the rest of the emu into the two trailers. While this would have been a YouTube video sure to go viral, no cameras were present to capture the chaos.

While we should have been done by 9:00 am, by 11:00 we had loaded all the emu and were headed out the way we came in, but the roads had gone from frozen ruts to a slimy, muddy slip-n-slide. We were glad that we had 4 x 4’s or we certainly wouldn’t have made it off the country roads. We were now well on our way to the processing plant in Central Kansas, and little did we know that we were in for more fun.

Emu are funny birds. As hard as they are to load onto a trailer, they often don’t want to get off once safely aboard. (Never mind the one that mistook me for a diving board.) While unloading all but two pairs of breeders into pens, one emu decided after he was off the trailer, that he would march right back up the ramp to the trailer again.

We finally finished at 2:00 pm, and famished, headed to a burger joint for a well deserved meal. We said goodbye to my youngest son, and the eldest and I headed back to 4 D Acres, completing our 450 mile round trip, only to arrive after dark. Because earlier attempts to unload the birds in the dark had failed, we decided to leave them safely on the trailer until morning.

My wife, waking early at 4 am to handle some of the feeding and farm chores, saw that it was beginning to rain. Knowing that my son and I were still sleeping off our long day, she decided to see if she could unload one of the breeder pairs by herself. Because each pair was in a separate compartment, it seemed that unloading just two at a time might be easier. As it was still dark, she had a flashlight with her, and when she shined it into the trailer to check on the birds, they started to follow the beam of light, right off the trailer. Might as well try it with the second pair as well. They seemingly unloaded themselves, mesmerized by the light. After my son and I heard the story of her super powers, we had to give her a good-natured ribbing, asking her where she was when we were loading the birds. We might just have to call her the Emu Whisperer.