Want to buy an emu? This Fife farm is selling five

Fancy a new feature for your back garden – how about a real, live emu?
Steve with the emusSteve with the emus
Steve with the emus

Steve Mitchell, owner of The Buffalo Farm at Boglily, is offering five of the large birds for sale and all you need is a large field with a high fence!

The original pair – Bog and Lily – were introduced to the farm near the end of 2017 and they soon hatched seven youngsters who quickly became one of the main attractions among the young visitors, alongside the buffalo, chickens and goats.

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Steve sold off two of the chicks after a few months, but the five who are now almost a year old, remained in a field next to the Bothy restaurant.

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However, with Bog and Lily now preparing for their second brood, Steve has decided it’s time to move on the older ones, and he has plans to pair them up with emus from another breeder in Fife and sell them as breeding pairs.

After putting a post on the Buffalo Farm’s Facebook page at the weekend advertising them, he says he has been overwhelmed with the response.

The post has been read by over 262,000 people and attracted more than 6000 comments.

“It has been absolutely amazing, I couldn’t have imagined the amount of interest it would cause,” said Steve.

“Of course there have been the jokers – one man asking if they would get on with his crocodiles and another saying he would pick one up in his car with a sunroof.

“But there’s also been interest from petting zoos and animal attractions, as well as everyday farmers who are looking to diversify from their usual animals, so we are confident they will all go soon. We had a couple down from Aberdeen at the weekend who are keen on having some.

“We want to sell them to people who will look after them well, and they are not for eating.”

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Steve has sent off feathers from all the birds to have them DNA tested to see whether they are male or female.

“The emus are great and have been some of the easiest livestock to look after. They eat chicken food or dry dog food.

“The only problem we had was when the goats had kids and they started chasing them, and they have also been chasing any pheasants which wander into their field.

“We’ve just moved them to another field to leave Bog and Lily in peace for their nesting, and, hopefully, we’ll soon have new chicks for visitors to enjoy watching,” added Steve, who is also working on plans for Scotland’s first buffalo mozzarella.