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CapitalPress.com
Friday, July 9, 2021
Drought: The worst may be yet to come
Continued from Page 1
rancher in Burns, Ore., he’s
rotating pastures twice as fast
as usual.
Like many ranchers,
Sharp is feeding supplements,
including protein tubs and
minerals. But that gets expen-
sive. Hay prices are 50%
higher than last year, accord-
ing to USDA, and mineral
expenses quickly add up.
Sheila Barry, University
of California natural resource
and livestock adviser, said
ranchers who rely on annual
grasses rather than irrigated
pastures are used to for-
age drying up each sum-
mer. What makes this year
worse, she said, is annual
grasses didn’t germinate well
in many places, were slow to
start growing, and in some
regions, are still recovering
from wildfire.
“The question for cow-
calf producers is: Do I have
enough forage to keep my
cows?” Barry said.
The answer, for many, is
no.
Auction staff across
the West say they’re see-
ing larger volumes, and in
some cases record num-
bers, of animals being
sold.
Faria of the Turlock Live-
stock Auction Yard said auc-
tion season moved up 30 to
45 days. People are cull-
ing cows heavier and selling
calves earlier.
Dozens of small-to-mid-
sized operations have folded,
selling entire herds.
“You have potential
flooding of the market with
excess inventory,” said Sharp
of Oregon Cattlemen’s Asso-
ciation. “That could really
depress live cattle prices at
auction.”
The worst may be yet to
come.
“There are a lot of people
who haven’t pulled the trigger
yet — in other words, they hav-
en’t liquidated yet,” said Shine,
the Lake County rancher. “But
a lot of them are sure looking
at it, and as the summer gets
along, there’s going to be a lot
more cattle on the market.”
Emu: Most emus in U.S. are remnant of zoo stock from 1930s and ’40s
Continued from Page 1
for nearly three decades.
He thinks the flightless emu
could soar again in the marketplace.
Emus then and now
Native to Australia, emus are
ratites, a group of flightless birds
that includes ostriches, rheas, cas-
sowaries and kiwis.
Most emus in the U.S. today
are remnants of zoo stock from
the 1930s and 1940s, Collins said.
Emus were so prolific that some
zoos sold them into the exotic bird
market.
In the early 1990s, emus were
touted as an alternative to beef.
USDA representatives visited Aus-
tralia to learn more about the birds,
intending to provide emu meat to
Third World countries.
“You can produce about 9,000
pounds of red meat on the same
space required to produce 500
pounds of beef,” Collins said.
“Especially living in highly pop-
ulated smaller countries, that’s
important.”
As interest in emus surged in
the 1980s and 1990s, producers
ramped up breeding. At the peak,
there were 1 million emus in the
U.S., Collins said.
“People figured out how to raise
the birds before they had a market
to sell them,” Collins said. “A lot
of producers got in because they
were supposed to make money
hand-over-fist selling breeding
stock.”
That didn’t happen.
Most investors were in their 50s
or 60s back then, Collins said.
“A lot of them found out how
much work it is,” he said. “Maybe
they’d never been in agriculture
before or been around animals
before.”
Today, emu ranches remain, but
not as many.
According to the 2017 USDA
Ag Census, there’s at least one
emu-growing operation in each of
the lower 48 contiguous states.
The census lists 210 emu oper-
ations with sales, and more than
1,500 operations with inventory,
estimating a total population of
11,535 emus in the U.S. That’s the
only emu data the USDA tracks,
communications director Tara
Weaver-Missick said.
The total number of farms or
homes with emus is probably more
than double that, said Joylene Rea-
vis, secretary of the American Emu
Association and a former emu
rancher near Madison, Wis.
“These are just the ones who
report them to the USDA,” Rea-
vis said.
That census includes:
• 12 farms in Idaho with a total
of 74 birds.
• 28 farms in Oregon with 186
birds.
• 48 farms in Washington with
266 birds.
• 122 farms in California with
925 birds.
• 17 farms in Montana with 750
birds.
Texas has the most, with 345
farms and 2,249 emus, followed
by North Carolina, with 40 farms
and 1,793 birds.
The most famous emu is likely
the “Limu Emu,” which appears
in Liberty Mutual Insurance
Co. television advertisements,
but Collins doesn’t care for that
characterization.
“It’s humanizing something that
is intended for food, and that puts a
Matthew Weaver/Capital Press
An emu at Don Collins’ emu
ranch.
Matthew Weaver/Capital Press
Year-old emus cluster near the corner of their pen June 22 on the Montana Emu Ranch.
MONTANA EMU RANCH
Website: https://montanaemur-
anch.com/
AMERICAN EMU
ASSOCIATION
Website: https://aea-emu.org/
negative angle on it,” he said.
Life on the emu ranch
In 1992, Collins was working
in the wholesale beverage indus-
try. Penni, his wife, worked as a
motorcycle shop manager.
They bought their first pair of
emus, expecting the birds to pro-
duce supplemental income.
“Then we got so involved in it,
it became our primary income,”
Collins said.
Collins had to initially cover
the costs of land, equipment and
improvements, but has been prof-
itable for at least 15 years, he said.
In 1998, they established a
“Laid in Montana” brand, refer-
ring to the emu’s green eggs. They
incorporated as the Montana Emu
Ranch Co. in 2004. Now, Collins
estimates, they’re one of the top 10
emu ranches in the country.
The ranch processes 250 to 300
emus a year at a facility 25 miles
away. The birds are processed at
14 to 16 months old.
“It’s kind of funny, as far as the
government’s concerned, they’re
taxed as livestock, and as far as
processing is concerned, they’re
considered poultry,” Collins said.
They also raise 25 acres of hay
for sale and keep four horses.
The ranch has 11 full-time
employees and three or four part-
time workers.
Collins used to offer tours for
school and 4-H groups, but didn’t
want to worry about the extra level
of precaution needed when mixing
emus with the public.
People still stop to take photos
of the birds from the road, he said.
The neighbors think it’s neat.
“There was some concern at
first, but they’re not noisy, they’re
not stinky,” Collins said.
The ranch smells more like the
straw, barley and wood shavings
used for bedding than anything else.
“If you’ve been around a hog
Matthew Weaver/Capital Press
Rancher Don Collins with some
of his emus.
farm, you know what odors are,
and these aren’t anything like
that,” Collins said.
Eggs to emus
An emu hen can produce 30 to
40 chicks a year, compared to lla-
mas or cattle, which usually pro-
duce one calf each year.
Emus lay eggs during the win-
ter. Collins starts collecting eggs in
November and incubates them in
January. Every two weeks, he puts
a new batch of 50 to 90 eggs in the
incubator. The birds stop laying in
April, and hatching is usually fin-
ished by June 1. The birds require
heat until they are 2 to 4 months
old, depending on the weather.
An ostrich rancher might have
to create a diversion to safely col-
lect eggs. The emu rancher can
simply tip over one male — they’re
the ones usually sitting on the eggs
— and move along to the next.
Emus aren’t territorial or
aggressive, although they’ll fight
back if frightened.
“But as far as them tracking
you down and pounding you into
the dirt, they’re not gonna do that,”
Collins said. “Ostriches actually
will.”
Emu eggs are edible. Collins
makes money boiling and disin-
fecting the eggs, selling the shells
for $15 to $20 each to crafters for
painting or carving.
“You can’t sell them for that
price as an eating egg,” he said.
Emus for meat
National emu meat production
isn’t large enough to attract a big
distributor, Collins said.
“Distributors are used to mov-
ing truckloads of meat, where we
only produce a couple pallets,”
he said. “The whole industry, you
might get a couple big truckloads,
but that would be about it.”
Collins recoups his processing
costs with meat sales as a byprod-
uct. He cited a 2000 University of
Wisconsin-Madison study on alter-
native meats — including ostriches
and rheas — declaring emu to be
one of the healthiest meats, based
on vitamin and iron content, pro-
tein and lack of saturated fat.
Collins said his ranch makes
most of its money with another
product.
Emus for oil
Those U.S. visitors to Australia
in the 1990s learned emu fat was
an “ancient Aborigine remedy” to
relieve aches and pains, Collins
said.
“In fact, they saw an old
Aborigine sitting on a log, he ...
was putting his hands in the emu
fat and rubbing it on his knees,”
Collins said. “They asked him
why he did that and he said, ‘It
makes the pain go away.’ That
kind of lit some light bulbs and
created a whole different market.”
Emus are processed at 80 to
90 pounds, and yield about 27
pounds of boneless meat and 22
to 24 pounds of fat. When it’s ren-
dered, 10 pounds of fat makes a
gallon of oil. Each bird can pro-
duce 2 to 2.5 gallons of oil.
“You can make a lot of skin-
care products out of a gallon of
emu oil,” Collins said.
He sells his line of products in
nearly 2,000 health food stores
nationwide. Other ranches sell
them worldwide, he said.
An array of products such as
oils, facial and body creams and
lotions are made on the ranch
in a cosmetics laboratory regu-
lated by the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration.
“You need to test and prove
everything that you state” on the
label, Collins said. “It gets really
difficult at times, because you’re
regulated to the point you can’t
tell people exactly how to use the
product or what it’s to be used for.
It’s a matter of wording and just
being careful.”
The emu oil market contin-
ues to grow, Collins said. Emu
oils can also be used as a comple-
ment to cannabidiol, or CBD, the
health-related chemical from hemp
plants, Collins said.
Some larger oil companies use
1-2% emu oil in their products to
stretch it because they can’t find an
affordable supply, Collins said. He
uses between 20% and 100% emu
oil in his products.
“You’ve still got to produce the
birds to meet the demand,” he said.
COVID impacts
The COVID-19 pandemic
prompted the cancellation of the
American Emu Association’s
annual convention in 2020. A new
date hasn’t yet been set, said Rea-
vis, of the association.
Many fairs, festivals and
farmers markets were also can-
celed, creating a lack of ven-
ues where farmers would nor-
mally sell their emu products,
she said.
Processing plants were also
shut down, creating a backlog.
“This has been a problem for both
livestock owners and emu grow-
ers,” Reavis said.
For Collins, in-store sales
that were lost during the pan-
demic
are
now
rebound-
ing, but online sales jumped,
he said.
Raising emus
Collins hopes to retire in the
next 10 years. He’s looking for
someone to take over and continue
his established brand.
“We’re not going to take over
the world, that’s not our goal,”
he said. “If somebody else wants
to jump into it and expand it, it’s
there.”
The ideal emu rancher might
be someone with an entrepreneur-
ial drive, and experience raising
livestock.
Overall, he said, he’s happy
with the way his emu ranch has
progressed over the years.
“I think we’ve had a very good
life,” Collins said. “Much better
than we would have if we had just
continued with our jobs. We did
quite well.”
Grasshopper: ‘It’s too late to do something about it because the damage is already done’
Continued from Page 1
private landowners in Klam-
ath County and Harney
County, advising the com-
munity on spraying just as
grasshopper eggs hatched.
For the most part, it worked
in that area.
Agriculture officials have
also seen a spread in other
areas such as Baker County
in Oregon and Walla Walla
County in Washington.
This year, the Animal
and Plant Health Inspection
Service contracted treat-
ment for 19,000 acres and
protected
approximately
39,000 acres through coop-
erative treatment projects,
said Clint Burfitt, state plant
health director for APHIS in
Oregon.
Rogg said the state
spends between $2 and $4 to
spray an acre.
In spring, grasshoppers
hatch from their egg and
gorge on food until their
bodies are big enough to
grow genitalia and wings —
cementing their adulthood.
That is their current stage
in Oregon, meaning Dimi-
lin, an insecticide that inter-
feres with molting in imma-
ture stages of insects, is now
ineffective.
“At this point, it’s too
late to do something about
it because the damage is
already done,” said Rogg.
However, land manag-
ers can contact local area
applications to arrange
other
treatments
inde-
pendently; APHIS will pro-
vide technical assistance for
treatments.
Parts of Oregon and
Idaho are also battling a
Mormon cricket infestation.
This spring, some Idaho
residents
experienced
an infestation of Mor-
mon crickets and shield-
backed katydids as millions
made their way through the
Owyhee rangeland, accord-
ing to KIVI-TV.
However, some environ-
mentalists worry about the
impacts pesticides meant
to manage the insects will
have.
“These are grasslands,
sometimes with hundreds
of different native pollina-
tor species found in them...,”
said Aimee Code, pesticide
program director with the
Xerces Society for Inverte-
brate Conservation, a con-
servation group focused on
insects.
Sharalyn Peterson, a
healthy wildlife and water
program manager at North-
west Center for Alternatives
to Pesticides, suggests insec-
ticides that are less toxic
such as BotaniGard ES and
Safer BioNeem, which stunt
population growth. Organic
biocontrols such as Nosema
locustae offer long-term
grasshopper protection, she
said.
Rogg said Dimilin is rel-
atively safe to use in pas-
ture settings as it should not
harm other insects such as
butterflies, which go through
a pupa stage before becom-
ing an adult.