How Much Does an Emu Cost? Chick, Adult, and Real Setup Price Guide

Author: Elliott Garber, DVM

Most emu chicks sell for roughly $150 to $600, with a plain brown standard chick near the low end and a blonde or white color variant near the top. Fertile hatching eggs run about $50 to $100. Grown birds are where the number scatters: a rehomed adult can change hands for a few hundred dollars, while a sexed young pair or a proven breeding pair listed by a working breeder can run into the thousands, occasionally well beyond. But the honest headline is the one most price pages skip. The bird is almost never the biggest line in the budget. Fencing, shelter, and enough land to hold a 5.7-foot animal that jumps and kicks routinely cost more than the emu itself, and you pay for feed and space for a bird that can live past twenty.

What follows is where each of those numbers comes from, why the price swings so wildly, and why the setup is the part to plan first.

To see current availability and asking prices, you can browse the emu marketplace on Creatures.

How much does an emu cost to buy?

Emu purchase prices depend on three things: the bird’s age, whether its sex is confirmed, and its color. A day-old chick is cheap relative to a grown, sexed, breeding-ready bird, and that gap is enormous because raising an emu to breeding age takes years of feed, space, and risk that the seller has already absorbed.

Chicks and hatching eggs

Chicks are the usual entry point. Across current breeder listings, standard brown emu chicks commonly run about $150 to $350, and specialty color chicks cost more: blonde chicks are often $300 to $450, and white chicks can reach $600. Those color premiums track scarcity, not any difference in the animal’s usefulness. A fertile hatching egg is the cheapest way in at roughly $50 to $100. But incubating ratite eggs is genuinely difficult, hatch rates are unforgiving, and any chick that does hatch needs careful brooding. Eggs are a route for people who already have the equipment and the patience, not a shortcut to a cheap bird.

One more thing worth budgeting for at the chick stage: sexing. Emu chicks are not visually sexable, so a DNA test (a modest lab fee per bird) is the only reliable way to know what you have before it matures. Unsexed chicks are cheaper precisely because the buyer is taking on that uncertainty. If your goal is a breeding pair, paying for sex confirmation up front is cheaper than raising two birds for a year only to find out they are the same sex.

Adult and breeding birds

Here the price stops being tidy. A grown emu might cost a few hundred dollars if someone is rehoming a bird they can no longer keep, or several thousand if a working breeder is selling sexed young stock or an established laying pair. Blog price pages float figures like $5,000 to $10,000 for a yearling and $11,000 or more for a sexed pair, and proven breeding pairs are sometimes advertised in the tens of thousands. Treat the high end with skepticism. Those numbers are thinly sourced, they vary wildly by region and by how eager the seller is, and they echo a piece of history worth understanding before you pay a premium.

In the late 1980s and 1990s, American emu farming inflated into a speculative bubble. Imported breeding birds sold for around $15,000, and breeding pairs were pushed above $40,000 on the expectation that emu would become, as the press of the day put it, the next red meat. According to a retrospective analysis of the collapse (Turvey and colleagues, published through the Canadian Agricultural Economics Society), supply outran the meat and oil markets, the bubble burst, and pair prices fell to roughly $1,000 as farmers left the business in droves. The industry never fully recovered; the 2022 Census of Agriculture counts only a small number of ratite operations nationwide, a fraction of the 2007 figure. The practical lesson for a buyer today is that an emu’s price is set by a thin, uneven market, not by a stable going rate, so a four- or five-figure “breeding pair” asking price deserves hard questions about the birds’ age, laying record, and health rather than an automatic yes.

The costs that dwarf the bird: land, fencing, and shelter

This is the part that catches first-time buyers, and it is the reason the sticker price is almost a footnote. An adult emu stands about 5.7 feet tall, weighs well over a hundred pounds, can jump around seven feet straight up, and kicks hard enough to injure a person or destroy a flimsy barrier. Housing that animal properly is where the real money goes.

Fencing. Emu keepers and extension guidance generally call for a fence about five and a half to six feet tall, because a full-grown bird reaches five to six feet at the head and can push over or jump a short fence. Chain-link or no-climb woven wire on steel posts is the standard. Wood rail fencing is a poor choice on its own, since a single kick from an adult can crack a plank. Fencing a suitable paddock is rarely a small job, and materials plus labor are the main reason a real-world emu setup commonly lands in the thousands rather than the hundreds.

Space. Emus need room to move. American Emu Association facilities guidance and working breeders put a pair pen on the order of one-eighth to one-quarter acre at minimum, with working ranches running several acres. If you do not already have appropriate fenced ground, adding it is a capital cost that can easily exceed the price of the birds.

Shelter and predator protection. Emus are hardy and tolerate cold and heat far better than most poultry, but they still need a windbreak or simple three-sided shelter, shade, reliable water, and protection at the vulnerable chick stage. None of this is exotic, but it adds up, and it is not optional.

Put together, fencing, land preparation, and shelter routinely run from a few thousand dollars to well over ten thousand depending on how much fencing you must build from scratch. For most buyers that infrastructure, not the bird, is the number that decides whether an emu is realistic.

Feeding and ongoing care

Once the fence is up, emus are relatively economical to feed for their size. An adult on a balanced ration eats around one and a half pounds of feed per day averaged over the year, according to American Emu Association feeding guidance. The right feed is a ratite-specific pelleted ration (brands such as Mazuri make one), because emus need a nutrient balance that ordinary chicken feed does not provide. A single bird’s monthly feed cost is modest, on the order of a bag or so of ratite pellets, but it scales with flock size and climbs when good pasture is not available.

Veterinary care is the wildcard. Emus are livestock-scale birds, and not every veterinarian is comfortable handling one, so line up a vet with ratite or exotic-livestock experience before you need one rather than during a crisis. Routine needs are limited, but an injury or illness in a bird this large is neither cheap nor easy to manage, and any treatment or medication decision belongs to your veterinarian, not a care blog. Budget a reserve for it the same way you would for any large animal.

Two ongoing realities have less to do with money than with time and safety. First, emus are long-lived; individuals commonly reach well over a decade in good care, and zoo records document birds living into their twenties and beyond, so this is a multi-decade commitment closer to keeping livestock than a short-term pet. Second, handling. Outside the breeding season a well-socialized emu is typically curious and manageable, but during breeding season the birds change. In emus it is the male that incubates the clutch and guards the chicks, and an incubating or brooding male can become genuinely aggressive toward anything that approaches, including people. Calm, consistent handling from a young age reduces problems, but no amount of socializing removes the fact that this is a powerful animal with a dangerous kick. Safe handling facilities are part of the true cost of ownership.

Is it legal to own an emu?

Usually yes, but check before you buy, because the answer depends on where you live and how you intend to keep the bird. Under the federal Animal Welfare Act, ratites including emus are treated as livestock when they are raised solely for meat, oil, eggs, hide, or feathers, and in that case no federal license is required. The USDA’s APHIS treats emus as exotic animals, and requires a license, when they are kept for other purposes such as public exhibition. Beyond the federal layer, states vary: some classify emus plainly as livestock, others regulate them as exotics or require permits. On top of that, county and city zoning often decides whether you can keep one at all, and residential zoning frequently rules it out. Before you put down a deposit, confirm the rules with your state department of agriculture or wildlife and your local zoning or animal-control office. This is general information, not legal advice; verify your own situation.

Buying well

A few habits keep the purchase from becoming an expensive mistake:

• Build the enclosure first, or at least price it, before you buy the bird. The fence and shelter are the real gate on whether emu ownership works for you.
• Buy from someone who will talk to you afterward. A breeder who knows the bird’s hatch date, sex-test result, and health history, and who takes your questions later, is worth more than a slightly lower price.
• Be skeptical of high adult and pair pricing. Ask what the animal’s age and laying record actually are. The thin market means asking prices are negotiable and sometimes detached from reality.
• See the birds and their setup in person when you can. Emus are shipped as chicks with difficulty and rarely as adults, so most sales involve pickup anyway, which gives you a chance to look at conditions.
• Plan for the long haul. With a lifespan measured in decades and a bird this size, the ongoing costs of feed, space, and the occasional vet bill outweigh the purchase many times over.

Emus can be rewarding to keep for people with the land, the fencing budget, and a realistic view of a large, long-lived, seasonally aggressive bird. If that fits, the purchase price is the easy part. If the space and infrastructure do not fit, no chick price is low enough to make it work.

If you are weighing emus against other large birds, the Creatures ostrich guide and rhea guide cover the two other ratites people compare them to, and the emu species page goes deeper on care and temperament. For smaller-bird budgets, see how the math changes in our cost of a peacock and cost of quail guides.

Frequently asked questions

How much does an emu chick cost?
Standard brown chicks commonly run about $150 to $350 from a breeder, while blonde or white color variants often cost $300 to $600. A fertile hatching egg is roughly $50 to $100, but hatching ratite eggs is difficult and best left to people with incubation experience.

Why do adult emu prices vary so much?
The market is thin and uneven. A rehomed adult can sell for a few hundred dollars, while a working breeder may ask thousands for sexed young stock or a proven laying pair. High four- and five-figure pair prices are a legacy of the 1990s emu farming bubble that collapsed, so treat them with skepticism and ask about the birds’ age, sex, and laying record.

What is the most expensive part of owning an emu?
Almost always the enclosure. Fencing five and a half to six feet tall on steel posts, appropriate land, and shelter routinely cost more than the bird, frequently in the thousands to over ten thousand dollars if you are building from scratch.

How long do emus live?
A long time. Well-cared-for emus commonly live more than a decade, and zoo records document birds reaching their twenties and beyond, so budget for a multi-decade commitment.

Is it legal to own an emu?
In many places, yes, but it varies. Federally, emus raised as livestock need no license, while APHIS treats them as exotics requiring a license when kept for other uses such as exhibition. States and local zoning differ, and residential zoning often prohibits them, so confirm with your state agriculture department and local zoning office before buying.

Do this next on Creatures

Whether you are pricing your first emu, comparing ratites, or already keeping a flock, Creatures is the marketplace, directory, and records layer to do it in one place.