IF YOU HAPPEN TO TAKE YOUR EYES OFF THE ROAD on Horseshoe Drive in Rural Brandon Township and gaze to the right, just past the house on the crest of the hill, you might catch a glimpse of Double E Ranch.
If you do, you’ll probably have to look again.
That’s because you’ve undoubtedly caught sight of Double E’s livestock — spindle-legged, long-necked curious creatures with perky tufts sprouting from the tops of their heads.
The big birds – known as emu – are a study in contradictions.
They are graceful ballerinas prancing in brown feather tutus.
They are serpentine investigators, quietly slithering their snakelike necks though fence openings, fixing their unblinking brown eyes on a source of interest.
They are klutzes when spooked, darting like panicky pin balls around their pens, kicking up clouds of dust.
NATIVE TO AUSTRALIA but raised in the United States for most of this century, emu are flightless birds raised for their meat, feathers, skin and the oil derived from their sizable fat stores. Emu oil is used in a number of products and his highly regarded in many parts of the world for its healing and regenerative properties.
In rural Oakland County, where wooded lots, rolling hills and horse stables are more the norm, the sight of 5-foot-tall birds padding around in pens is still a head turner.
Interest in emu ranching as well as the food and products derived from the prehistoric birds is growing, said Renee Miskey, owner of Double E Ranch. If she and other emu ranchers have their way, the big birds won’t be an enigma for long.
Miskey raises and sells most of her emu for their meat. She also sells (but doesn’t manufacture herself) various emu-based products, such as hand lotions, soap, and pet food. She collects and empties the large, dark green emu eggs and fashions them into ornaments, jewelry boxes and knickknacks. Once a month she sets up a vendor booth at Royal Oak Farmers Market.
MOST PEOPLE DON’T KNOW WHAT EMU ARE, where they’re from, or their useful properties. Least of all do they understand how quirky and personable the big birds can be.
Miskey’s trying to change that. For a small fee, she hosts student groups at her 10-acre spread in the country. She’s more than happy to “talk emu” with shoppers at the Royal Oak Farmers Market.
“A lot of children are not used to the farm environment,” she said. “This is one way to show them how ‘products’ are brought up. Some kids don’t understand that pork chops start out as farm animals.”
Miskey and husband, Gene Beesley, have been raising emu for almost five years. They started with 20 birds and have had as many as 250 at one time. They are raising 170 birds now and join about 120 other emu ranchers in Michigan.
The work involved in emu ranching is minimal, she said, with most of it front-ended in the building of the pens and shelters.
Nothing goes to waste in emu ranching.
“Ninety-seven percent of the bird goes into production,” she said. “Emu put more back into the soil than they take out. They live on the ranch year-round. They are pellet and grain fed. There are no chemicals, steroids, hormones or antibiotics given.”
Learning to successfully breed and maintain the birds has been an odyssey of trial and error, Miskey said.
Much of her information has been gathered from the American Emu Association’s Michigan chapter and from other ranchers.
“Most of it is learning how to (successfully) hatch them and take care of them,” she said.
Miskey at one time kept riding horses in her barn, but switched to the exotic birds as a way to spend more time at home.
“It was my husband’s idea,” she said.
“With my love of animals and my nursing career, this was a way for me to be at home and take care of something.”
ON A RECENT OVERCAST, HUMID AFTERNOON the emu were active but quiet in their pens, which separate the birds according to age. Only the striped hatchlings emitted a discernible cheep-cheep-cheeping. Adult emu utter a soft, throaty sound that resembles the beating of a bongo drum and could easily be mistaken for bullfrogs in a nearby swamp. Miskey said emu are quiet neighbors and don’t generate the waste or odor of other livestock.
While the birds are raised for slaughter and for the most part are regarded as such, Miskey said some emu are extremely personable and reach out with their gaping beaks and tug on her heart strings. A certain number are kept around for breeding purposes, she said.
“Those you get attached to easily,” she said. “You know they’re not going anywhere.”
Emu, when accustomed to humans who are taught how to approach them, are incredibly curious and friendly. They aren’t beyond nipping at shiny metal buttons, dangling earrings and long hair. A human entering a pen of the big birds can expect to be surrounded, pecked and prodded.
“I love to watch them hatch and grow,” Miskey said of the personal rewards of emu ranching. “Nature is exciting to me.”

For more information on tours of Double E Ranch, which is less than an hour’s drive from southeast Oakland County, or about emu products and crafts, call 248-627-4286 or send e-mail to dbleranch@aol.com.

Originally published in The Daily Tribune on July 4, 1999.