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Dan Van Alst of Phoenix, Arizona was busy doing an installation
job for the local phone company at a nearby ranch that had emus
as well as several exotics. During the visit the ranch owners informed
Van Alst "all about emus - enough to rouse his curiosity," as he
relates the memory.
Van Alst, who had been keeping an eye open for a possible retirement
venture and/or side income enterprise decided that emus were worth
studying. He investigated emus for two years before obtaining his
first birds in 1994.
"I attended seminars and visited several ranches before I set my
own place up," says Van Alst. "Then I combined a lot of other people's
good ideas as well as scrapped ideas that hadn't worked out for
others."
On The Farm
On a seven-acre parcel Van Alst proceeded to build over 10,000 feet
of fence, install automated feeders and waterers, and enclose an
acre of 22 breeder pens. He now has a five acre colony pen and just
over 400 birds. Emus provide a side source of income for Van Alst,
who still works a 60 to 80-hour week for the phone company. The
emu farmer's facility layout is such that it requires minimum time
to care for the birds. Emu feed comes in by semi loads and is loaded
directly into several feed bins. The only feed moved on the operation
is to breeder pens and this Is done with an ATV and a small John
Deere trailer about once every two weeks.
The farm has seven incubators and Van Alst says that most of his
hens lay a minimum of 40 to 50 eggs a year. To Improve his bird
genetics he employs a strict culling system. He keeps each hen two
laying seasons to see what they're capable of producing. Hens that
don't lay over 35 eggs at the end of the second season are replaced.
"What I'm after is high production and large birds," comments Van
Alst. "I cull the hens with low production and fertility rates because
it costs you the same to feed a high producing hen as it does a
low producing hen."
In southern Arizona when the temperatures soar to 110 plus degrees
Fahrenheit, Van Alst mentions that his birds' water consumption
goes up, but that they do just fine. His breeder pens have shade
covers and mesquite trees and scrub brush provide shade in the colony
pen. And while southern Arizona winters can be rather mild, the
temperatures can drop into the teens at night. Van Alst says he
lost 100 3-4-week-old chicks last year. He explains, "They were
in an outside pen and we had a cold rain in the day then that evening
it dropped into the teens. And even though I had heat bulbs out
there, hypothermia claimed over 100 chicks."
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Jade Oasis Marketing & Proceeds
In 1995 Van Alst had enough birds to start marketing byproducts
of and began marketing emu oil and emu meat. He relates that his
yearly tax return feeds his birds and all revenues from meat, oil
and egg sales are spending money. Van Alst says total emu product
sales in 1999 were significant and totaled $22,000.
The emu farmer says he does all his processing himself. He has
his bird fat rendered and refined by Emu Producers International
Cooperative (EPIC) at Texas A & M.
Jade Egg Oasis pure emu oil goes for $10 an ounce (the price drops
on larger orders) and is sold in 1 ounce to five gallon sizes. To
promote emu oil sales Van Alst is generous about giving away 3/4-ounce
emu oil samples.
"Everything I've done is pretty much word of mouth," Van Alst says,
"and I keep getting lots and lots of repeat customers and every
year it seems like my oil sales double. I don't know that I have
to raise birds to sell oil but the whole idea of raising birds was
to give me something to do if I decide to retire from the phone
company. I'm also working with a CEO of a pharmaceutical company
in China who wants to start off with 3,000 to 5,000 gallons of oil,
but the shipping excise tax has been a road block and we're trying
to work around it."
Van Also relies on word of mouth advertising for emu meat sales.
He says his customers are basically people that know he has birds.
He sells his meat from $1 to $5 a pound depending on cut and quantity.
He also has value-added products made up, which he says he finds
harder to market. "I sell mostly ground because there's no surprises
there and summer sausage sales are also good."
While emu meat is a stable seller. Van Alst says he's currently
moving 10 times the amount of oil over meat and says, "I have people
coming up to me saying, 'Do you have any of that emu juice with
you? I need to buy some.' I always carry some oil in my company
truck as well as in my personal truck."
Emu eggs don't go to waste at Jade Egg Oasis. Van Alst receives
$10 each per blown shell and sells between 20 to 30 fresh emu eggs
a week during season for $5 each. He says the fresh eggs are purchased
mainly as an oddity and comments, "I've had a couple different restaurants
make bread with them and they related that it was excellent. From
the eggs I blow out I make homemade noodles, omelets and more."
Research Possibilities
In 1999 Jade Egg Oasis was visited by a laboratory representative
seeking to do research on emus.
'They wanted to find out if it was a chromosome that dictated the
sex of the birds," says Van Alst. "He came out when I did some butchering
of some small 40 pound birds that had injured their legs as chicks.
The gentleman wanted some live tissue and he also wanted me to hatch
out some eggs because he wanted to find out what dictated the sex
of the bird in the embryo."
Adds Van Alst, "I told him that I thought I could tell what dictates
the bird's sex, and that is by the temperature which it's hatched
out at. He said he could understand that being the case in reptiles
but not in birds. However, I found that when I hatch at a higher
temperature predominantly females hatch out and when I hatch at
a lower temperature predominately males hatch out. He said it was
probably the luck of the draw."
Van Alst remarks he enjoys his birds and his product business and
is satisfied with his emu endeavor. "Just the fact that people know
me locally here. I'm happy with that. I enjoy talking to other people
about the birds and the products."
For more information contact:
Jade Egg Oasis
35415 N. Central Ave.
Phoenix, AZ 85027
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Emu Today & Tomorrow
Phone: 580-628-2933
Mailing Address: 11950 W. Highland
Ave.
Blackwell, OK 74631-6511
Fax: 580-628-2011
E-mail: emutoday@aol.com
Emu Today & Tomorrow magazine is owned and published
by Schatz Publishing
Group, a team with over 20 years of combined experience
in researching agricultural opportunities. Our staff is always
interested in your ideas for upcoming articles.
Contact Emu Today with your ideas by email
or by calling 580-628-2933.
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