What comes out of an egg this BIG? The 50 day hatching adventure.
We've never hatched out anything bigger than a turkey. So when I saw these beautiful green, emu eggs on eBay... I thought, why not!
First thing we needed, were the eggs - bought 'em.
Then we needed a high quality incubator we could trust with eggs this big. We got the Brinsea Ova Easy Advance 100. Check.
Then the eggs showed up and it was on!
First we had to weigh them. We found an article on Backyard Chickens about egg weight compared to the humidity provided and decided to use that as our guideline.
We incubated our eggs at 96° F with 30% humidity. Both of our eggs lost 90 grams over the course of 53 days which was perfect.
Then an egg pipped...
On day 53, our first egg pipped and hatched!
But the other egg didn't move. No sound. Nothing.
On day 56, I decided to drill a security hole. A technique used to provide oxygen to the egg without completely opening the egg up. It was at this time that I felt something in the egg, but it wasn't moving.
I decided to open up the egg. I found an emu that was about 75% developed but no longer alive.
The good news was that we had one very healthy emu chick.
The only problem was that we only had one. These guys like to pair up. And if you don't provide a friend, they will bond with you. We weren't quite ready for that commitment, so we polled the audience if we should get more eggs to hatch out or sell this baby emu.
The story continues...
