I'm not at all sure that Moa would make effective pack animals.
It's tricky, because we don't have a lot of literature out there with respect to avian pack loading, and not many candidates for that literature.
In OTL really, the only genuine avian candidate was the Ostrich, and the Gray Ostrich wasn't domesticated until the 19th century, at a time when the domesticating culture already had several superior draft animals readily available. So the Ostrich was never really applied in any significant way as a domestic pack animal.
There has been Ostrich riding of course, but my understanding is that these were only for short sprints. It doesn't really tell us much about the avian as a long term beast of burden.
If we go by mammal standards, most good sized domesticate draft animals can pack a load of approximately 10 to 20% of their body weight. Dogs and Reindeer are at the far end of the scale managing packs between 25% and 40%. But they're at the physically smaller end of the scale.
Assuming that a Moa weighs in about 500 pounds, that suggests a pack carry of between 50 and a 100 pounds.
But what's critical about a draft animal is not just the burden it can sustain momentarily or for a short time, but its long haul endurance. Here, I think Moa might have a problem.
How does a draft animal develop long haul endurance? It inherits it. Why do the ancestors have long haul endurance? Because they had a niche or lifestyle which encouraged travelling great distances - in many cases, they're migrators or patrolled through massive territories of hundreds or thousands of square miles. They were distance travellers, moving a long way to have their daily meal. And this long distance travel capacity had to be a feature of immature and juvenile animals, which tended to mean that the adult forms had muscle and heart to spare.
Having said that, what about the Moa? I don't have the impression that the Moa were great migrators, long distance travellers, or collectively maintained large territories. My impression is that most likely, they're roughly akin to relatively sedentary animals - ie, ones which basically remain within relatively limited territories or move slowly through their environments. Those animals, such as deer, don't develop the capacity as juveniles to travel vast distances with the herd, and therefore don't develop the sort of endurance and excess capacity that would make them good long distance pack carriers.
Moa, as beast of burden, is probably a poor bet. Particularly when there's an off the shelf domesticate, horses, becoming available. Cattle might also become available. So there's competition. And both horse and cattle are trained domesticates, they have a history, there's intellectual capital in the bank as to how to handle them, how to load them, the sort of harnesses. All the stuff that would have to be learned from scratch from the Moa are potentially already available on the shelf.
That's setting aside the wrangling and pack carrying issues - we have no idea how easy or difficult it would be, but definitely everyone is starting at the low end of the learning curve.
Throw in the slow maturation rate, and the likelihood that the birds are browsers, not grazers.... Moa are a tough sell.
It's tricky, because we don't have a lot of literature out there with respect to avian pack loading, and not many candidates for that literature.
In OTL really, the only genuine avian candidate was the Ostrich, and the Gray Ostrich wasn't domesticated until the 19th century, at a time when the domesticating culture already had several superior draft animals readily available. So the Ostrich was never really applied in any significant way as a domestic pack animal.
There has been Ostrich riding of course, but my understanding is that these were only for short sprints. It doesn't really tell us much about the avian as a long term beast of burden.
If we go by mammal standards, most good sized domesticate draft animals can pack a load of approximately 10 to 20% of their body weight. Dogs and Reindeer are at the far end of the scale managing packs between 25% and 40%. But they're at the physically smaller end of the scale.
Assuming that a Moa weighs in about 500 pounds, that suggests a pack carry of between 50 and a 100 pounds.
But what's critical about a draft animal is not just the burden it can sustain momentarily or for a short time, but its long haul endurance. Here, I think Moa might have a problem.
How does a draft animal develop long haul endurance? It inherits it. Why do the ancestors have long haul endurance? Because they had a niche or lifestyle which encouraged travelling great distances - in many cases, they're migrators or patrolled through massive territories of hundreds or thousands of square miles. They were distance travellers, moving a long way to have their daily meal. And this long distance travel capacity had to be a feature of immature and juvenile animals, which tended to mean that the adult forms had muscle and heart to spare.
Having said that, what about the Moa? I don't have the impression that the Moa were great migrators, long distance travellers, or collectively maintained large territories. My impression is that most likely, they're roughly akin to relatively sedentary animals - ie, ones which basically remain within relatively limited territories or move slowly through their environments. Those animals, such as deer, don't develop the capacity as juveniles to travel vast distances with the herd, and therefore don't develop the sort of endurance and excess capacity that would make them good long distance pack carriers.
Moa, as beast of burden, is probably a poor bet. Particularly when there's an off the shelf domesticate, horses, becoming available. Cattle might also become available. So there's competition. And both horse and cattle are trained domesticates, they have a history, there's intellectual capital in the bank as to how to handle them, how to load them, the sort of harnesses. All the stuff that would have to be learned from scratch from the Moa are potentially already available on the shelf.
That's setting aside the wrangling and pack carrying issues - we have no idea how easy or difficult it would be, but definitely everyone is starting at the low end of the learning curve.
Throw in the slow maturation rate, and the likelihood that the birds are browsers, not grazers.... Moa are a tough sell.
