\u201cThe farmer thought it could be another income source but didn\u2019t realise how much grass they could eat. Basically, they cleaned his paddocks out, so he realised there wasn\u2019t much money in it \u2013 hence the reason he\u2019d got them cheap \u2013 so he left the gate open and let them out.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a conservationist, Atkins knows there are wild emus breeding in a few locations around the Ruat\u014dria area.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you know where those areas are, you can keep an eye out for them, but it looks like they\u2019ve got predators, which are feral cats.\u201d<\/p>\n
Atkins\u2019 emu discovery unfolded last weekend when he went to the beach to get more wood while celebrating his 60th birthday with a few quiet ones around the fire. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhere we turned up, there was a male emu sitting on a nest and he got a fright and took off. Five chicks had already been born and there were probably another six eggs or so. <\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t want to keep him off the nest long and even worse, I didn\u2019t want to risk them imprinting on me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Imprinting is when chicks hatch and follow the first thing \u2013 animal or human \u2013 they see moving. <\/p>\n
\u201cBecause the father had been scared off and the five chicks were all in a cluster, I moved on pretty quick.\u201d<\/p>\n
Atkins worried overnight that the male bird had not returned, leaving the chicks unguarded, so he went back the next day.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t want to upset him again but needed to make sure he was there looking after the eggs and the chicks.<\/p>\n
\u201cI managed to sneak in close because it\u2019s all gorse and weed down on our beach with plenty of pampas to provide cover. I could hear a couple of the chicks, that \u2018peep peep\u2019 noise they make, so I took that as a positive.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey were still there, but I couldn\u2019t see the parent \u2013 the father emu.\u201d<\/p>\n
Emus belong to the ratite family, the same as kiwis, and the males raise the brood.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I snuck in, I could hear the chicks peeping, then I heard one doing a real loud squeal. I knew that didn\u2019t sound too healthy, so I stood up.<\/p>\n
\u201cA feral cat had grabbed one of the surviving chicks. When it saw me, it got a hell of a fright and took off with the chick down through the gorse. I went over to the nest and it was obvious the father hadn\u2019t come back.<\/p>\n
\u201cFrom the five chicks, there were only two left, but I could see where the cat had parked up next to the nest and would keep killing at its leisure.<\/p>\n
\u201cI felt pretty stink about it cos it was me who scared the parent bird off of the nest, so I brought them home.\u201d<\/p>\n
Crushed emu eggs after a feral cat ate the baby chicks. Photo \/ Graeme Atkins<\/p>\n
Since then, Atkins has sought advice through social media and learned emu chicks should not be on a hard surface that they could slip on because it would affect their leg development and could cause a complication called splayed leg (when the hip turns out and the leg turns slowly out to the side over time).<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I\u2019ve got them in a bin now, [and] we bought these wool mats. They\u2019ve been sleeping inside these last few nights, near the fire, because it\u2019s been so cold.\u201d<\/p>\n
The chicks are a week old now and Atkins\u2019 moko Te Ahupo loves to follow them around.<\/p>\n
In six months, the emus will tower over Te Ahupo and Atkins fears they could hurt him with their claws if he is too friendly and plays rough-and-tumble with them.<\/p>\n
Adult emus can grow up to 1.9m in height and weigh about 35kg on average.<\/p>\n
Atkins said he would release the emus once they were big enough to survive alone.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll put bright-coloured collars on them so we can keep an eye on them and hope they\u2019ll be okay once they see their own kind in the wild.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re lucky in this part of the world \u2013 there\u2019s plenty of cover for them, especially at the Waiapu River mouth, where there are big islands covered in pampas and gorse. It\u2019s like a refuge for them where they can exist and breed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Wild emus can be seen on the coastal beach near Ruat\u014dria. Photo \/ Graeme Atkins<\/p>\n
Atkins said his emu-saving actions came from a sense of responsibility \u201cbecause I\u2019d disturbed the father and it was frightening how quickly the feral cat had found them\u201d.<\/p>\n
He and his family live in a bush reserve in Tikapa, northeast of Ruat\u014dria, where he\u2019s been trapping possums, cats, rats and stoats for 30 years.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s never-ending,\u201d he said. \u201cFeral cats are everywhere. They\u2019re a huge problem, killing all bird species indiscriminately.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause I come from a conservation background where I do this sort of mahi, I realise it\u2019s forever unless there\u2019s some silver bullet somewhere down the line. Sadly, I don\u2019t think there is.\u201d<\/p>\n
Atkins said he wasn\u2019t worried his isolated piece of paradise would appear on the tourist map due to the emus as most people \u201ccouldn\u2019t hack\u201d the rough road.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to be committed to get here, so I don\u2019t think we\u2019ll be inundated with visitors as a result of the story.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Department of Conservation (DoC) said it was not aware of emu on public conservation land it administers.<\/p>\n
\u201cDoC\u2019s work focuses on native species. Emus are legally kept as farmed livestock or novelty animals, and fall under the Ministry for Primary Industries guidelines.\u201d<\/p>\n
A Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) spokesperson said emus were not an unwanted organism and didn\u2019t fall under MPI\u2019s management.<\/p>\n
An unwanted organism is any organism that\u2019s capable of causing harm to natural or physical resources, like forests and waterways, or human health, according to MPI.<\/p>\n
Discussion of the region\u2019s wild emu population can be found online in various hunting forums as far back as 5-10 years ago. <\/p>\n
Sightings of wild emus have also been reported historically in Southland, Waikato and the Waitomo district. <\/p>\n
A 2013 Dominion Post article reported a \u201cbaby moa\u201d reported in a woman\u2019s garden in Masterton turned out to be a wild emu.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThe farmer thought it could be another income source but didn\u2019t realise how much grass they could eat.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":569098,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[2840,74,10748,8688,67741,11586,109727,47677,8414,9060,48901,3806,36643,148674,14395,71,6540,2514,440,2250,20998,111,139,280222,529,69,151757,280223,17145,13913,766,52086,147,4499,9348,8229,1237,3608,15391,406],"class_list":["post-569097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-across","tag-after","tag-came","tag-cat","tag-chicks","tag-coast","tag-colony","tag-conservationist","tag-couple","tag-decades","tag-decided","tag-east","tag-emu","tag-farmed","tag-feral","tag-from","tag-hand","tag-island","tag-local","tag-longer","tag-nest","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nonnative","tag-north","tag-nz","tag-parkinson","tag-peril","tag-raising","tag-remote","tag-reports","tag-rescues","tag-science","tag-small","tag-survived","tag-they","tag-two","tag-were","tag-wild","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=569097"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569097\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/569098"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=569097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=569097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=569097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}