Berry Springs Tavern gifts emu eggs to Crocodylus Park dingoes

Berry Springs Tavern’s emus have laid eggs for the first time, and the unincubated clutch isn’t going to waste. See the adorable video of the eggs’ happy recipients.

The Top End’s best-known emus have laid eggs for the first time, but one cheeky chap wasn’t quite ready to rear a brood of chicks.

Berry Springs Tavern duty manager Daniel Woodall said the hearty clutch went unincubated but hadn’t gone to waste.

Mr Woodall said some of the eggs were donated to Crocodylus Park’s dingoes.

“My wife is the head zookeeper at Crocodylus, we raised those two dingo puppies Alkina and Junior,” he said.

“We took a couple of them into Crocodylus and let them kind of play with them.

“I cracked a little bit of the egg just so they could smell what it was, and then they rolled all through it, drank it.”

Mr Woodall said it was a chance for the pups to “get back to their roots”.

The Berry Springs Tavern logo was engraved on one of the emu eggs and framed. Picture: Daniel Woodall

Berry Springs Tavern's emus have laid 27 eggs this year. Picture: Daniel Woodall

Mr Woodall said he had been trying to encourage the pub’s mob to lay eggs for a while and was thrilled to find three of the large, blue-green eggs in the grass in July.

“We blocked certain areas off so the public can’t see and they feel a bit more at home, and I planted a bit more native grass around the back part of the enclosure,” Mr Woodall said.

“As soon as that started taking off, they started to nest in it.

“It’s still going on now, I think we’re up to … 27 eggs for the season.”

Berry Springs Tavern's emus have laid eggs for the first time, but the young male emu was not ready to lay on them to incubate them. Picture: Daniel Woodall

But the eggs can’t hatch without incubation, and the tavern’s young, male emu – who has yet to be named – wasn’t up to the task yet.

“He’s only about two years old and they get into maturity at two-and-a-half, three,” Mr Woodall said.

“He just wasn’t up to the nesting side, but he was doing the other side – we saw a couple times when he was letting the female know that he was there and we saw signs of mating and everything with our female emu, but he just wasn’t up to sitting on them this year.”

Mr Woodall said he had no doubt the frisky emu would be ready to incubate his eggs next year.

He said it was just a matter of waiting for the bird’s “natural instinct” to kick in.