It took a lot of convincing to get the first emu egg to hatch here on the homestead. The first egg didn't have the best beginning, but it hatched against some pretty tough odds. The first egg was purchased off Ebay and shipped to us. We tracked the package daily. It should have been here within 3 days but USPS had a different idea, they misrouted it into a snow storm. So the 50% chance that a shipped hatching egg normally has, was now about 25%. Oh well we will still try and hatch it. We named the egg Fred and into the incubator it went. Mid incubation the heating element (a light bulb in my homemade incubator) went out. We don't know how long it was out, just that the incubator was cold when we went to hand turn the egg in the morning. I replaced the light bulb and said a little prayer thinking surely this egg has no chance of hatching now. You cannot candle Emu eggs like you do chicken eggs, but on day 35 you can whistle to them and if they are alive the egg might wiggle in response. Day 35 rolls around and I set the egg on the floor and whistle to it, and IT MOVED!!! I yell to my husband who thinks something is gravely wrong at this point in time. I proceed to tell him that the egg moved and I am dancing around like a kid on Christmas. But the egg still has the hardest task still ahead of it, hatching. On 5/8/2023 Fred hatched! I went to check on the egg that morning and a freshly hatched little wet emu chick was sitting there in the incubator looking at me. Naming the egg Fred may have not been the ideal name since after having the chick DNA sexed it turned out Fred was a girl! Oops! Well after all that she had been through we were not changing her name. 

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It would take another year and a half to convince my husband that Fred needed a friend and we bought 3 more hatching eggs. These eggs had an easier start to life. In may of 2025 2 more emu chicks hatched and one ended up being a blonde male emu, named Zazu, that we kept to become Fred mate. We hope that they will still like each other in the 2026 breeding season and produce some eggs for us. Emus can be sassy creatures that love each other one minute but not the next.