Emmanuel The Emu Tested Negative For Avian Flu And Was Suffering From Stress

On October 15, Taylor Blake of Knuckle Bump Farms announced the sad news on Twitter that her farm had been hit with avian flu and most of the resident birds had passed away. Anyone who follows the farm on Twitter or TikTok knows there's a special emu named Emmanuel Todd Lopez who also resides on the farm. Shortly after the news broke, Emmanuel began to show signs of illness and Blake worried that he could be the next casualty. After weeks of nursing him back to health, she recently shared some good news about the TikTok famous emu on Twitter.

"Emmanuel Todd Lopez tested negative for Avian Influenza at 2 separate labs, swab, fecal and blood. He does not have the virus, and is not actively shedding the virus God is good! Thank you for the prayers, the kind words, and the support. Always trust your intuition!" she tweeted on October 22. The tweet was liked more than 76,000 times and retweeted thousands of times. 

Emmanuel's symptoms could have been due to stress, according to Blake, who commented on her tweet with, "We believe this all stemmed from stress. Emus are highly susceptible to stress. He was incredibly overwhelmed by the state coming in and euthanizing our flock. (Although it was necessary, it was still very stressful on him) He stopped eating the day they depopulated."

She went on to explain all they did to try to find the cause of the emu's sudden illness. "All in all, I think he was off feed for at least 3-4 days, and we aren’t sure if he drank water at any point during that time. Ideally, I would’ve began fluids, but with him so stressed, it was nearly impossible. I just kept trying to feed him and get him to drink," she wrote. "He went down in the middle of the night. Because he was so weak and dehydrated, he lacked the strength to get back up. He panicked. He was down a majority of the night we assume, and had been thrashing on the ground for hours, trying to get himself up."

Blake also explained that they tried to immediately draw blood to run tests but his dehydration wouldn't allow for it. It took four days of around-the-clock care to help to get his blood pressure back up and hydrated again. "Something in my gut just told me that this wasn’t the end for him. So I kept fighting for him, and I don’t regret it. He never once had a single symptom of AI, other than not eating, which is often caused by stress in emus. It was just very coincidental timing," she wrote. "We tested for everything under the sun, and he tested negative for absolutely everything. EEE, West Nile, Chlamydia, Salmonella, etc. We truly believe all of this stemmed from stress."

The most recent update on Emmanuel was posted on Twitter two days ago.  " Emmanuel Todd Lopez is making a comeback!!" Emmanuel's fans hope that he's back to his old antics of pecking at the phone while Blake is trying to film content soon. But for now, there's tons of fun videos on the farm's TikTok page of Emmanuel.