Friday, July 9, 2021
Volume 94, Number 28
CapitalPress.com
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All About EMU
EMUs
Flightless birds off er
challenges and
opportunities,
grower says
By MATTHEW WEAVER
Capital Press
K
ALISPELL, Mont. —
Emus are curious birds,
longtime rancher Don
Collins mused as he
entered a pen full of
yearlings.
About 20 of the large, fl ightless birds
immediately fl ocked around him.
That curiosity makes working with them
tricky, Collins said. A farmer
might feel a pinch from a beak or get a tool snatched out
of his hand.
“Anything that’s diff erent, they will peck at,” he said.
“Especially shiny stuff .”
It’s a quiet Tuesday morning on Collins’ Kalispell,
Mont., ranch, except for the drum beat vocalizations of
the emu hens and the occasional grunts of the males.
Collins, 64, good-naturedly chats about emus. He
knows these birds — he’s run one of the nation’s largest
emu ranches since 1992, raising 600 emus at a time on his
40 acres.
Some people incorrectly confuse emus with ostriches,
which are territorial and ornery. “If these were ostriches,
I’d be dead,” he said as he emerged from a pen.
Emus don’t graze and can’t be turned out to forage.
They must remain penned and require high-protein pel-
letized grains.
Matthew Weaver/Capital Press
On the rare occasion that an emu slips out of a pen, it
A 2-week-old emu
won’t run.
chick in its pen.
“They are a very fl ock-oriented creature,” Collins said.
“If one gets out by itself, it’s back over there, (by) the
fence, wanting to be with the other ones.”
Emus were once supposed to be the “next big thing” for American ranchers.
Collins got in the business back then, and never got out. He’s been raising them
Matthew Weaver/Capital Press
Curious emus cluster around rancher Don Collins
June 22 at his Montana Emu Ranch in Kalispell,
Mont.
EMUS AT A GLANCE
• Native to Australia
• Adult size is 5 to 6 feet tall and 125 to 150
pounds
• Maximum running speed is 31 mph
Getty Images
• Live for about 30 years, may produce eggs for more
than 16 years
• Female is dominant member of the pair
• Male sits on the nest
• Products include leather, meat and oil
Information: Texas A&M University system
See Emu, Page 10
Severe drought drives cattle ranchers to take painful measures
By SIERRA DAWN McCLAIN
Capital Press
As drought intensifi es across the
West, cattle ranchers are making dif-
fi cult decisions.
Amid water and forage short-
ages, mounting hay prices and mar-
ket fl uctuations, many ranchers are
selling cattle so they’ll have fewer
mouths to feed. Some are culling
cows, selling calves early and reduc-
ing breeding stock numbers. Others
are selling entire herds.
“This is probably the most seri-
ous drought California has seen in
my existence,” said Steve Faria, cor-
porate broker at Turlock Livestock
Auction Yard in California’s Central
Valley. “I’ve been marketing cattle
going on 43 years, and I haven’t seen
DROUGHT
RESOURCES
Check out this list of drought
resources compiled by Ore-
gon Cattlemen’s Association:
https://orcattle.com/resource/
drought-resources/
Courtesy of K’Lynne Lane/Oregon Cattlemen’s Association
Tanner McIntosh, a rancher from Gilliam County, Ore., herds a
group of cattle.
the issues that we’re seeing today.”
Many ranchers say they’re wor-
ried about drinking water supplies.
Wells, ponds, streams and lakes are
drying up. Some ranchers are having
water trucked in — a huge expense.
Paul Lewis, who runs cattle on
leased land in Klamath County, Ore.,
said he’s concerned he’ll no longer
have water from nearby Gerber Res-
ervoir by the start of August.
“Everybody’s knuckled down,
saving water,” he said.
Cyndie Siemsen, another Klam-
ath Basin rancher, said she’s worried
about her aquifer.
“If the well goes low, we’re going
to have to start hauling water,” she
said.
Ranchers across Oregon and Cal-
ifornia say forage is parched and
limited. Some are driving out of state
in search of pasture. Others are rotat-
ing pastures more often.
“It’s the worst I’ve ever seen it,”
said John Shine, a rancher in Lake
County, Ore.
Shine charges other ranch-
ers a fee to graze their cattle on
his summer pasture, but because
grass is limited, this year, he’s
stocking 30% to 40% fewer
animals.
Tom Sharp, president of Ore-
gon Cattlemen’s Association and a
See Drought, Page 10
Grasshopper, cricket activity on rise
By MIA RYDER-MARKS
Capital Press
Capital Press File
Grasshopper activity is
high in parts of the Or-
egon.
Along with a punishing heat wave,
active wildfi re season and a persistent
drought drying up crops across the
West, farmers also have to deal with
growing numbers of grasshoppers and
Mormon crickets.
The USDA’s “2021 Rangeland
Grasshopper Hazard” map shows that
parts of Eastern Oregon and South-
ern Idaho have high numbers of the
insects. The map shows part of Ore-
gon has densities of at least 15 insects
per square yard. Eight grasshoppers
per square yard are considered enough
to cause economic damage on pasture
and cropland, according to Helmuth
Rogg, director of Plant Protection &
Conservation Programs for the Ore-
gon Department of Agriculture.
In 2020, Oregon had over 1 million
acres of grasshopper infestations.
“The biggest biomass consumer in
this country is not cattle, it is not bison,
it is not whatever else — it’s grasshop-
pers,” Rogg said.
Agricultural damage from grass-
hoppers can be catastrophic. Grass-
hoppers can eat 30 to 100 milligrams
of dry plant material each day, and six
to seven grasshoppers per square yard
will eat as much as one cow.
According to the USDA, the 17
western states impacted annually by
the insects have an average of $400
million in forage losses and 20% crop-
land losses.
This spring, offi cials worked with
See Grasshopper, Page 10
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