Emus chicks look pretty much similar to small ostriches. In fact, you can call them the second-biggest living bird found out there in the world. The emu’s chicks are flightless. In fact, people tend to raise emus chicks mostly for meat. They provide healthy and lean meat as well. At the time of raising emus chicks, one of the biggest challenges that you will come across is to understand what to feed them. So what to feed emu chicks?
What to Feed Emu Chicks?
Emus chicks tend to consume a variety of insects and plants. In fact, you can call them omnivorous animals. Due to the same reason, you will have numerous options to feed the emu chicks. However, it is still important to pick the most appropriate and nutritious foods out there. That’s where you can take a look at the following options.
Water
It is important to understand that emus chicks require a lot of water for their growth. If you raise emu chicks, you will need to think about keeping them hydrated at all times. Water is needed by the emu chicks to process the food that they consume. According to studies, it has been identified that an emus chick tends to consume around 10 to 18 liters of water per day.
However, these animals will consume water infrequently. Therefore, you will be able to see emu chicks consuming a large volume of water at a given time. To help your emu chicks, you should provide them with lots of clean and fresh water on a daily basis. You can use an automatic water feeder too.
Vegetables and fruits
The emu chicks don’t have any complaints about consuming plant-based foods. Therefore, you can think about providing numerous vegetables and fruits to them. Some of the vegetables and fruits that you can give to the emu chicks include cabbage, cake, carrots, potatoes, onions, beets, and apples. Likewise, you may also think about getting any other type of vegetables and fruits to them. If it is a vegetable or a fruit that humans can consume, you may think about giving it to the emu chicks.
Plants
What to feed emu chicks, plants? As you can guess by now, emus chicks tend to consume numerous types of plants. In fact, they prefer to consume fresh herbs. Likewise, you can also provide numerous vegetables and fruits, as discussed in the previous section. These chicks don’t hesitate to consume greens. While keeping this in mind, you can provide them with hay, crops, grains, and grass. If it is tasty, emus chicks will go ahead and consume it.
Meat
What to feed emu chicks, meat? The emu chicks require a lot of protein to ensure their growth. In fact, you need to consider it as a responsibility to provide enough proteins, so that they grow strong and healthy. Otherwise, there is a high possibility for the emu chicks to catch illnesses.
These chicks tend to consume non-poisonous insects as food. In other words, they prefer to eat crickets, grasshoppers, cockroaches, beetles, cotton ball moths, Bogong, ladybirds, millipedes, spiders, ants, and many other types of insects. However, the emu chicks usually don’t have access to insects while they are being raised on farms. This is where you may think about providing alternative sources of protein, such as chicken eggs, bone meal, small animals, and meat.
You should never forget that emus chicks are capable of catching and devouring small animals such as lizards and mice. Whenever there is a need for the emus chicks to get nutrition, they usually tend to catch such insects.
Seeds and grains
The emu chicks prefer to consume grains as well. Therefore, you may think about providing emus chicks with ray bread, bran, hay, yeast, oats, and all other types of grains. However, it is better to keep in mind that emus chicks usually prefer to consume grains that have larger seeds. This is why you should focus more on providing them with peanuts, sunflower seeds, and corn.
Small stones
What to feed emu chicks, small stones? Surprisingly, emu chicks tend to consume small stones as well. That’s because small stones are capable of helping the emus chicks to grind up the food that they consume. On the other hand, it can help them with the proper digestion of food as well.
If you are providing small stones to the emu chicks, you need to make sure that they weigh around 50 grams each. At a given time, an emu chick is capable of consuming up to 750 grams of small stones.
Feed
If you are raising emus chicks in a domestic environment, you can think about keeping them on pellets. That’s because the feeds are capable of providing nutrition that emus chicks require in the right quantities. Therefore, you will be able to raise healthy emus chicks in the comfort of your home.
What variations to diet are possible?
It is also important to understand how you can change the diet of emus chicks. As mentioned earlier, emus chicks are notorious peckers and omnivorous. Therefore, you can expect them to consume numerous odd objects and food items. For example, emus chicks are capable of consuming shards of glass, charcoal, jewelry, car keys, bolts, nuts, and numerous other random objects.
However, the emu chicks are fond of consuming human foods as well. There are situations where emus chicks tend to attack human beings just to grab foods that they consume. This is something that you need to be mindful of.
If you are raising emus chicks, you will need to keep the environment litter-free. Otherwise, they will consume the random objects seen around them. In case if emus chicks swallow pollutants such as plastics, they will fall ill. That’s because their digestive systems are not designed to handle such food items.
Final words
Now you know how to feed emus chicks. Make sure that you pick the healthiest foods available to emus chicks and start feeding them. Then you can raise your emu chicks healthily.
