Welfare considerations for farmed cassowaries in Australia and Papua New Guinea, examining their specialized needs, territorial behavior challenges, and the welfare of these powerful birds in commercial settings.
Cassowary farming presents extreme welfare challenges because these birds evolved as solitary forest-dwelling fruit specialists with powerful defensive capacities and complex territorial requirements. Commercial farming environments that attempt to house multiple individuals together violate their solitary nature; provision of nutritionally adequate frugivorous diets in captivity is logistically complex; and their extreme defensive behavior creates handling hazards that may result in aversive management practices. The welfare question of whether cassowary farming can be made welfare-compatible given their specialized needs deserves honest examination. For the small number of cassowary farms operating, investment in species-appropriate space, appropriate diet diversity, and solitary housing represents the minimum welfare standard.