Saturday, July 27, 2013

Emu's obsession with Brahman bull causes fertility problems for farmer

A farmer near Aramac in central-west Queensland, Australia, says her pet emu, Louie, believes she is a cow and has a "bullfriend". Station owner Margaret House says Louie, who was rescued as a chick and grew up with calves, now poses an unusual fertility problem with her cows.

She says Louie has now found her mate, a Brahman bull, and is not prepared to share. "She's been out trying to mate with the bull - all the time she lives with the bull," Ms House said. "She follows him everywhere - she sleeps with him in the middle of the day by the dam.



"The problem is she won't let any of the cows near him and she won't let him serve any of the cows, so we've had to put other bulls in the paddock to try to solve our fertility problem." Ms House says Louie sings a song to her mate. "She sings this drumming song to the bull all the time," she said.

"We're just really waiting in anticipation to see what's going to come out of those eggs - whether we're going to have calves with feathers, or whether we're going to have emus with horns and a hump - we don't know."

4 comments:

Unknown said...

hope you're gonna write a follow up on that

arbroath said...

Don't hold your breath. :)

SteveC said...

Chances are it will be along the lines of either:

'Farmer House was since re-homed the emu'

or

'Louie' the emu finally got her wished and has mated with her bullfriend, the bull. Services for the deceased, Louie, were 5 minutes after the act. Some say you can still her thumping her disapproval as cows are bulled.'

arbroath said...

Ha ha, you're probably right, Steve!