Emu and Rhea Farming: The Male Does the Incubating

The ostrich is not alone. Two other members of the ratite family — the great flightless birds — are farmed too: the emu from Australia and the rhea from South America.

The three look alike but they are three different businesses: the ostrich's money is in the hide, the emu's is in oil, the rhea's in meat. And all three share one strange trait: the male does the incubating.

Three Ratites, One Table

	Ostrich	Emu	Rhea
Origin	Africa	Australia	South America
Weight	100-150 kg	30-55 kg	20-40 kg
Height	2-2.7 m	1.6-1.9 m	1.4-1.7 m
Toes	2	3	3
Egg	1.4-1.6 kg, cream	500-650 g, dark green	550-650 g, cream-yellow
Incubation	42 days	50-56 days	36-40 days
Who incubates?	Male by night, female by day	The male alone	The male alone
Main product	Leather	Oil	Meat and leather
Danger	Very high	Moderate	The sitting male is fierce

A note on toes: counting toes has become a habit in this series. Five in the Faverolles, four in an ordinary hen, three in the emu and rhea, two in the ostrich. The faster the bird runs, the fewer toes it keeps.

Incubation at Its Extreme: The Male Emu

Throughout this series we have asked who sits on the eggs. In chickens, geese and turkeys it is entirely the female's job. In pigeons the pair take shifts. In the ostrich the male takes the night and the female the day (he is black and vanishes in the dark; she is grey-brown and hides by daylight).

The emu goes one step further: the male does all of it — and destroys himself doing it.

• The male sits on the eggs and barely leaves the nest for 50-56 days
• Through that whole period he does not eat or drink; he burns body fat
• He can lose up to a third of his body weight
• The female walks away — and may mate with other males and lay in other nests

The rhea is more extreme still: the male builds the nest, several females lay in that one nest (10-60 eggs), and he incubates the lot alone and then raises the chicks alone. While he does, he is ferociously aggressive — he charges anything that approaches, including female rheas.

The practical consequence: do not enter a rhea paddock in the nesting season. Lifting the eggs into a machine is the standard commercial choice, for safety as much as for output.

The Emu's Real Product: Oil

The ostrich's money was in the hide. The emu's is in oil.

An emu carries a thick fat pad on its back — a survival store for the Australian dry season. Rendered, it becomes emu oil:

Product	Per bird	Note
Oil	6-10 litres	The main product. Used in cosmetics and skincare
Meat	14-25 kg	Red meat; as lean as the ostrich's
Leather	~1 m²	Known by its quill pattern; the leg skin is separately prized
Eggshell	—	Dark green to black; highly valued for carving

Careful: the market for emu oil, like the market for ostrich leather, is one that must already exist. With no access to a plant that renders and processes it, you cannot capture the emu's real value. The single question from our ostrich guide applies here too: "Who will buy the product?"

Sexing an Emu: By Ear

Male and female emus look almost identical (the female is a little larger). But there is a clear difference in voice — and it echoes the test we set out for the guinea fowl:

• The female: using an inflatable neck sac, she makes a deep, drumming "boom" that carries for kilometres.
• The male: he grunts — a hoarse, pig-like sound.

So the loud, deep-voiced one is the female. Another line for the series' sexing table:

Bird	How you tell
Pilgrim goose	Hatch day — by the down
Guinea fowl	By call — the hen's is two-syllable
Emu	By call — the female drums
Ostrich	By plumage — the male black and white, the female grey
Rhea	Hard; the male is larger with a darker neck

Incubation: A Green Egg, and No Candling

The emu egg is dark green, almost black. It makes a beautiful ornament — and a problem for the hatchery:

• Candling is impossible. With the ostrich the obstacle was a 2 mm shell; with the emu it is the colour — no light gets through at all.
• The answer is the same: instead of candling, use an accurate scale. Weigh regularly and follow the 13-15% weight-loss curve.

The settings:

• Emu: 50-56 days; 35.5-36 °C (lower than for chickens); 25-40% humidity
• Rhea: 36-40 days; 36-36.5 °C; 30-45% humidity
• In both, low humidity is the rule — as with the ostrich, raise it out of chicken habit and you drown the embryo

The Kuluçka Takip app builds the calendar by species and reminds you of turning and hatch days — a 56-day emu calendar is not something you hold in your head. You can check out the app here.

Care and Safety

The emu is markedly safer than the ostrich — but it is not safe:

• Emus are curious: they approach and peck at anything bright. They are far less aggressive than ostriches.
• Even so, they kick, and they have claws. A grown emu can injure a person badly. The same rule holds: don't stand in front of the bird, and back away rather than turn.
• The rhea is timid — except for the male on the nest. In that season, entering the paddock is dangerous.

Paddocks and housing:

• Space: at least 300-500 m² per pair or trio (less than an ostrich, still generous)
• Fence: 1.5-1.8 m and visible — a panicking bird that runs into a fence breaks its neck
• No corners: round off the paddock corners
• Nothing bright on the ground: like the ostrich, emus and rheas swallow nails, wire and stones and die of an impacted gizzard. Comb the paddock.
• Chicks: a slippery floor splays their legs; the floor must give grip. Feed a ratite starter; the logic of our brooder guide applies on a far bigger floor.
• Hygiene: the rules in our biosecurity guide apply.

The Legal Position — and the Honest One

Emus and rheas are exotics in Türkiye and most of Europe, not native wildlife. Check your local rules on keeping, transport and sale — a different regime from the game-bird licence in our pheasant and partridge guide.

And let's be honest: in most countries outside Australia there is no established market for emu and rhea products. Plants that render emu oil, and buyers for rhea meat, are scarce to nonexistent. In practice these birds are kept as curiosities, and a commercial model risks repeating exactly what happened with the ostrich: a bubble in which farms sell breeding stock to one another.

Who Is It For?

The emu suits you if: you have land; you have a real buyer or processor for emu oil; you want a ratite more manageable than the ostrich; and you can wait two or three years.

The rhea suits you if: you want a shorter incubation (36-40 days) and a smaller bird; and you have a niche buyer for meat and leather.

Neither suits you if: you don't know who will buy the product; your land is small; you're thinking of it as a hobby (these birds weigh 30-50 kg and they kick); or you need income soon.

If you want a big bird and a real market: the turkey (20 kg, an established trade) or the goose (pasture, meat and down) are far sounder choices.