How to Raise Juvenile Hill Mynas and Tips for Telling Males from Females
Many retired grandparents nowadays have nothing much to do at home, so they keep some small animals at home. Many grandpas like to keep small birds, such as parrots and mynas. Today I want to share with you a kind of bird called the juvenile hill myna. Many people have never come into contact with this kind of bird, so today I will introduce to you how juvenile hill mynas should be raised.
How to Raise Juvenile Hill Mynas
1. Generally there are two kinds of feed for raising juvenile hill mynas: one is granular feed, usually egg, rice, egg and rice; the other is soft feed, made by mixing minced meat, cooked chicken (or chicken feed), fruit or berry jam.
2. Feed once a day (in summer) or twice a day, and if conditions allow, put a few insect larvae or pupae in the soft feed.
3. For juvenile bird food, powder feed and minced meat can be mixed with water or mashed banana into a paste. Roll into small balls and hand-feed, 5—8 times a day. When the bird can eat on its own, switch to soft food, and after the feathers are fully grown, add egg and millet.
How to Tell Male from Female Hill Mynas
1. For young mynas, because they have not yet molted, it is easy to distinguish male from female mynas by feather color. Male mynas have black, glossy feathers, while female mynas have noticeably grayish or pale black feathers, and are not so glossy and colorful.
2. For mynas that have already molted, because female mynas will likewise grow a new set of black glossy feathers, at this time they look quite similar to male mynas, but the black is not as glossy as that of male birds; this is one point. The main thing is to look at the distribution of the white feathers under the tail feathers. The white feathers under the tail feathers of mynas are basically distributed at the tips of the tail feathers and in the middle under the tail feathers. You can distinguish them by looking at the middle under the tail feathers. Through observation you can see that the feathers growing in this area form a V shape. The white feathers in the V-shaped area are very obvious, and the ones that form a V are male mynas. Female mynas have fewer white feathers in this area, do not form a V shape, and are scattered, with layer upon layer of white feathers; you can compare with the pictures.
3. Male and female birds are the same color, and it is very difficult to distinguish them by appearance. Generally speaking, they are distinguished comprehensively according to body size and head shape. Those with a large, round head and a large body are female; those with a small, pointed head and a slender body are mostly male. Therefore their sex requires careful observation to be identified. It can also be identified by observing the cloaca: if there is a protrusion in the cloaca, it is male; if there is no protrusion and it is flat, it is female.
How to Train a Hill Myna to Talk
1. The best time to teach a bird to “talk” is during the period from juvenile feathers to adult feathers, teaching it in the morning and evening on an empty stomach, and the surrounding environment should be quiet, with no noisy sounds. The syllables of the words taught should first be few and then many; after it learns one sentence, teach the second sentence. Each time it “says” something clearly, reward it with food it likes, such as bananas and insects. Many repetitions are needed; generally it takes 3—7 days to learn one sentence, and one that can learn 10 sentences is excellent.
2. The easiest way is to use an old bird that has learned to talk to lead it, and when teaching it to talk, having the bird face a mirror makes it faster. As for the saying that a hill myna must have some kind of surgery on its tongue to learn to “talk”, there is no scientific basis for this. Because the vocal organ of most birds is the “syrinx” located at the lower end of the trachea where the bronchi branch, and sound is produced by the contraction of attached muscles, whereas the human vocal cords are at the upper end of the trachea.
What Are the Taboos of Raising a Pug
1. Bathing blindly. Many pet owners report that pugs have a strong body odor, so to keep the dog clean and eliminate the odor, the owner increases the number of baths. But this is not advisable! Dogs have their own natural protective oil layer, and frequent bathing only destroys it, which is actually bad for the dog.
2. Eating indiscriminately. When dogs are young, they may pick up things from the ground and eat them. Some accidentally swallowed foreign objects will be excreted with the feces, but some will damage the gastric and intestinal mucosa or cause intestinal obstruction, so if severe vomiting and abdominal pain are found, you should seek medical attention in time.
3. Regular feeding. Some pet owners like to feed pugs at night, afraid the dog will go hungry, but over time they find the dog has a fat belly and indigestion.
4. Feeding only meat. Many pet owners want pugs to grow strong, so they feed pugs only meat, but feeding this way easily leads to unbalanced nutrition in pugs and can even cause picky eating.
5. Large amounts of snacks. Often giving pugs some snacks, such as ham and canned food, which dogs all love to eat, but over time this will have a bad effect on the pug's body, and there is the danger of “eating only snacks and not staple food”.
6. Never going out. Although pugs do not need frequent exercise and mostly rest and sleep at home, some owners therefore do not take pugs out for a long time.
Above, I have also shared with you some little tips on how to raise juvenile hill mynas and how to tell male from female hill mynas. Have you all learned them? If there is no one in the family who keeps birds, I guess they are not needed. In fact, if you have time to keep a bird, it really can bring a lot of fun to life.