A Ruatoria conservationist has become surrogate father to two emu chicks after a firewood-collecting trip spooked their nesting father, scattered the eggs and left the brood at the mercy of a feral cat.
Graeme Atkins, a conservationist based on the East Coast, stumbled across the emus a few weeks ago when he pulled up to gather wood for a birthday celebration.
"Of all the places to pull up, [it] was right next to where the father emu was sitting on eggs," he told Seven Sharp.
"He got a fright and took off."
The father left behind about a dozen eggs, five of which hatched. That night Atkins couldn't sleep, worried the adult bird had not returned in what he described as a howling gale.
When he crept back to the nest, he could hear the chicks but could not see their father, then heard a loud screech. He arrived to find a feral cat picking off the chicks among broken shells and cold eggs. Just two survived.
"So, I grabbed them and brought them home. I didn't know if that was going to be a wise decision – what are we getting ourselves into?"
Asked whether he should have let nature take its course, Atkins said the answer was straightforward.
"To me that was an easy one to answer, because I felt responsible for that situation," he said. "If I hadn't pulled up to get wood right next to where father was nesting... father taking off and never coming back – I felt responsible."
He has been raising the chicks, named Po and Hautea after local maunga, in a fenced backyard enclosure that he moves every two days to keep them on fresh grass. Their diet runs to silverbeet, kale, spinach, strawberries and grapes.
Atkins admitted he knew "zero" about raising emu chicks and had leaned on Google and social media for advice. His moko, Te Ahupo, has become the birds' exercise partner and closest companion.
The chicks belong to an unlikely wild population that has quietly survived and bred near the Waiapu river mouth for about 30 years, descended from a local farmer's failed attempt to farm the birds in the 1990s. The story has since drawn interest across the Tasman.
"I know of three separate populations around Ruatoria," Atkins said, adding that footprints in the riverbed silt had fooled locals for years.
"I've been with mates who've taken photos and say you're not going to believe this, and they show me the emu footprints, and I have a good laugh."
Some people have suggested raising the chicks to a certain height before releasing them to find others of their kind, but Atkins is not convinced.
"I think they're too humanised," he said, adding he was not confident they would survive in the wild.
At a month old, the pair are already growing fast. "In six months time those chicks are going to be five feet tall," Atkins said. "Had them for a month and yeah, that's all they do is eat."
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