Is Emu Market For The Birds?

They're not much to look at, and they're not too smart either. But there was a time when the Australian Emu was the most popular bird in Texas.

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Some saw the bird's lean meat and oil rich fat as the next boom commodity. "A lot of people got into this business, they thought, to make a fast buck," says Tom Thomason, of the Texas Emu Association. "And they weren't prepared to ranch animals for a living."

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Near Fort Worth, Sheriff Jay Brown says the boom busted violently. "They were costing them too much to feed them," he says. "So they were either killing their birds or turning them loose."

Emus were clubbed to death. Dozens more were shot. Deputies rounded up 200 stray birds, but as many as 100 are still roaming wild and hatching chicks.

Six years ago, at the height of the emu boom, a pair of breeding adults could fetch $30,000. Today, that same pair could be had for less than $1,000. Those are the kind of numbers that signaled a busted market to many emu ranchers.
"They are going to put 'tenacity' on my tombstone, because I firmly believe this market is going to fly," rancher Maurine Pearson says.

Don't count Pearson among the cynics. She has 600 emus at her ranch. "This is not a breeders' market anymore," she says. "It is a commercial market. We are raising it for the meat and the oil."

But it's a market that Pearson admits is still a few years away. For now, the birds are an odd sort of curiosity Â— worth a look perhaps, but to may former ranchers, not much more.

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