OUR STORY
Background
Marrocka Emu farm was first purchased as a vacant block of land in 1991 by its current owners Ian and Marilyn Marston.
This 100 acres was not profitable as a conventional broad acre farm so various alternate farming practices were researched with emu farming as the stand out option.
The first 50 emus were purchased in 1994.
How does one farm emus?
Being a brand new farmer in a brand new industry, if you needed help your options were limited as to where you could get sound advice. Most farmers were still in the trial stages and lots of errors and mistakes were made.
The easiest of the problems was the fencing as detailed instructions came from NPWS Apart from the problems arising from incubation, hatching, brooders, pens, hygiene and vaccination to name a few, feeding the mob to increase the bottom line was indeed a challenge. All this was done by trial and error.
When it came to moving the birds and loading them to go to an abattoir was a whole new experience. It used to take literally days to move them into a paddock and load them onto a truck.
We can now do this in a matter of hours.
What products are made from emus?
Meat was the first priority early in the history of commercial emu farming and is a healthy, lean meat full of protein.
But the industry and the farmer couldn’t survive on meat alone.
Eventually the products from the oil were developed and improved.
Emu oil is used as moisturisers, soaps, shampoos, lip balms, heat rubs.
As emu oil is very penetrating it absorbs into the skin for a much better result than most conventional products.
Feathers are in big demand especially as Marrocka emus supplies the feathers for the Army’s Armoured Corp for their plumes in their slouch hats.
Leather is used to produce the lighter type accessories such as wallets and purses with the leg skin being an added feature.
The Breakthough – Vitamin K2-MK4
The industry knew the oil seemed to be helping some ailments such as arthritis but we were unsure why it did it. About 10-15 years ago one of the farmers in our group suggested that we all go with this certain type of emu as the oil appeared to be more potent. Over a few years the group had the same oil and unlike fish oil, the oil you have today is the same if not better than the previous bottle.
The oil was tested just 3-4 years ago and it was discovered it was extremely high in the vitamin K2-MK4, an element that boosts your immune system naturally.
The emu oil boosts your immune system and your immune system fights the disease
With Covid on the doorstep it was no wonder the industry cannot keep up supply.
The Emu industry into the future
The emu industry has experienced a number of concertina effects with the products.
Early years we had an abundance of raw materials but few markets.
Now we have an abundance of markets with not enough product to fill the orders.
There is room in the industry for new farmers but we need to be aware of the concertina effect. We must build markets in align with our supply to keep the concertina effect to a minimum.
This allows the industry to supply a top quality product, maintain good prices for the farmer and affordable prices for the consumer.