Now that the Emerys are growing up, I have decided to stop babying them. For example, even though only one of them prefers lettuce to cabbage, I am feeding them all lettuce on alternate days. The three emus who prefer cabbage have learned the hard way that sometimes it’s only going to be lettuce so, while they wait for the cabbage, the lettuce-loving emu eats all of the lettuce and the fussy ones go without.
I have also stopped chopping lettuce scraps into bite-sized pieces for them, although I still do this with cabbage because I don’t want them to choke. The daily cabbage chopping has given me a blister between the thumb and forefinger of my right hand, and elicits hysterical laughter from friends who happen to drop by when I am doing this ‘cut lunch’ thing, but, well, you know….
Only one of the emus saves her back by bending into a crouch to eat. She was also the first to figure out how to tear a lettuce apart by herself. Of course I am just assuming she is a ‘she’!
Even though they are in a big yard, I don’t like keeping the Emerys so confined but, as you know from previous posts, letting them out of their yard poses risks. For example, about 50 kms north of here, a pet emu was stolen recently. This has made me realize that human predators are much worse than foxes; the incident described in the news item below is distressing.
I’m not so worried about our emus because I have a new method when I let them out for a sprint. I park the car at the end of the driveway near the road just in case they go that way (I don’t want to have to herd them back from our neighbour’s rose garden again!) If only Baby Turkey would stop scaring the hell out of them, they would happily zigzag around the house block but, once Baby Turkey does her ‘fly up and peck the emu in the face’ thing, they all panic.
The other thing that concerns me is the risk of concussion from falling pears. You see, in the emu yard there are two pear trees with great big pears dropping off all the time. Some of these pears are the size of an emu’s head, so what if….?
Also, why don’t they eat the pears? Then I wouldn’t have to keep chopping up the cabbage!
Etcetera!
jmgoyder 
They look like they have hair. Ive never seen one.
Yes, it is like hair – very coarse hair.