Emu Key to Million-Dollar Export Vision

“Emus are the dumbest animals put on this planet, but never stand in front of them or they’ll rip you open,” said Steven Hawker, sporting the scars to prove it.

Hawker, who manages the Kalaya Emu Farm nine miles out of remote Cue in the middle of Western Australia, said farming the tall, ungainly, native birds is normally easy work--except during mating season.

“They get quite aggressive during mating season and often kill each other,” he said.

“When you have to pair them you’ve got to make sure you’re standing behind them or they’ll try to kick you--and they can open you up from head to toe.”

But Hawker is hoping that what the flightless emu may lack in intelligence, it will make up for in other ways on the export market.

For the last two years Hawker and a group of local Aborigines have been raising the 6-foot-6 emus with the intention of selling their meat overseas as a delicacy, their leather hides for fashion garments or book binding, and their oil for use in cosmetics.

By the time the first emu steak graces the plate of an upscale restaurant in Europe in 1992, $150,000 will have been injected into the farm.

Situated on land above a vast artesian spring system, Kalaya’s 1,000 acres are a plush green oasis in this arid and dusty land, boasting date trees and grape vines.

“You can grow anything here provided you have the water, and we have the water,” said Hawker.

Kalaya’s unique natural resources have placed it at the vanguard of the embryonic emu farming industry in Australia.

“We are involved in a major expansion operation here. We hope to have 2,000 birds by the end of the year thanks to two incubators we’ve ordered,” Hawker said.

There are currently 17 licensed emu farms across Australia supporting an estimated 4,000 birds.

This year about 1,000 emus will be slaughtered purely for market research. The industry’s first commercial cull will come in 1992, when an estimated 11,000 to 15,000 birds will be killed for domestic and export consumption.

“The industry is at a critical stage,” said Noel Fallon, president of the Emu Farmers’ Assn. of Australia.

“It’s got great potential but it needs to be carefully managed to avoid overproduction,” he said.

Fallon said an initial overproduction and fall in prices is inevitable, but he hoped prices, now currently $150 a bird, will not fall much below $98.

“Once it (the industry) gets up on its feet I think it will survive quite well, but we must first overcome that trough that besets any sunrise industry,” he said.

By 1997 the industry hopes to be exporting 80,000 birds annually and earning just under $12 million in sales.

“Italy, France and Spain have all expressed interest with the industry, but the Asian market remains largely untapped,” Fallon said.

Fallon said the industry is being modeled on the ostrich industry in South Africa, where a farmers co-operative issues quotas to both producers and buyers and monitors quality control.

Farming emus is not hard work--like sheep, the long-legged emus are docile creatures and can be easily worked.

Pairs of mature birds are kept in small pens while mating. Once the eggs have been laid they are taken to incubators and the mature emus herded into larger paddocks containing a few dozen birds.

Emu chicks are nursed in separate pens as the mature birds leave them to their own devices once they are old enough to walk and leave the nest.

Fully grown birds, their bulbous bodies weighing between 99 and 110 pounds, will yield 33 pounds of meat, 10.7 square feet of leather and 1.3 gallons of oil.