Sharing Experience in Feeding and Managing Thrush Birds

Thrushes can be kept as nestlings or adults, but adults are harder to tame and train, so most enthusiasts prefer to keep nestlings. Thrushes are classified by age into four types: “nestling”, “soft-feathered”, “full-feathered”, and “old-feathered”. A “nestling” is a young bird that has just hatched and has not yet left the nest; once the nestling’s feathers have fully grown in, it is called a “soft-feathered” bird; after the soft-feathered bird molts the following year, it is called “full-feathered”; and a bird over two years old is called “old-feathered”. “Nestlings”, “soft-feathered”, and “full-feathered” birds are all classed as young birds.

If you choose to keep an adult bird, you can select a combative one; generally, a good fighter is also a good singer. The requirements for posture are: it should not lie flat on the cage floor, not squeeze into the perch, and not tilt its head back; when singing, it should grip the perch firmly, hold its body upright, and hook its tail on the perch, showing a gallant bearing. Plumage colors come in green, yellow, and red. Birds whose feathers lie tight against the body and whose tail is club-hammer shaped are better. There is a bird-selection saying: “Body like a gourd, tail like a lute, neck like cut bamboo, beak like a nail, add a pair of beef-tendon legs, and one cage will beat nine cages.” Adult thrushes are relatively large, and two males must never be kept in the same cage; the cage must be sturdy, and the cage bars must be thick. Newly caught wild thrushes are extremely wild, flapping and crashing about, and need to be placed in a board cage. A layer of dark “cage cloth” should also be wrapped around the outside of the cage, which will help them settle down as quickly as possible. After they are tamed, switch them to a bright cage. If kept and trained properly, after “opening up” to song, they can sing all year round except during the molting period, and their calls are stirring and pleasant.

Generally, young birds are gentler in temperament and easier to keep, but their singing period is short and the song is not melodious enough. It is best to choose a three-month-old nestling to keep.

Thrushes like water baths, and it is best to have a dedicated bathing cage. In summer, bathe them once a day; in winter, appropriately reduce the frequency according to the climate conditions. Thrush droppings are soft and loose, so the cage bottom should be an open bottom with a droppings tray underneath.

The main feed for thrushes is egg millet (millet mixed with egg or rice mixed with egg), and the proportion of egg should be slightly higher than for finch-family birds (4 eggs per 500 grams of grain). Regularly feed them flour worms, skin worms, locusts, grasshoppers, or minced fresh beef and mutton, fruit, and so on. Insect feed should be fed by hand as a lure, about 10 insects per day.

The regular feed is made by mixing chicken mixed feed with cooked eggs (3 eggs per 500 grams of mixed feed), or by mixing cornmeal, peanut meal, and cooked eggs in a 6.2:2 ratio. It is advisable to mix some clean sand grains into the regular feed to aid digestion; otherwise, the droppings tray must be removed and the cage placed on grass so the bird can peck freely.

The thrush’s “loud song” period runs from April to July, after which it gradually “goes out of season” and begins to molt. After 40 days, the new feathers have grown in and it begins to sing again, but at this time the song is not as loud and clear as during the “loud song” period, so it is called “soft song”. A good thrush can sing in “soft song” straight through to the next year’s “loud song”.

During the “loud song” period, thrushes are extremely combative, so two males must not be made to sing facing each other; otherwise, the loser of the singing contest may from then on be too ashamed to open its beak, or may exhaust itself to death.

[Training]Thrushes are naturally quick to learn and extremely good at imitation; by letting them listen to the calls you want them to imitate, including recordings, they can learn them. But thrushes also have a poor memory and will forget over time, especially after the molting period, when they often forget the sounds they have learned and need to relearn them. The sequence of a thrush’s “call repertoire” is also not as stable as that of the skylark, and it often “improvises”.

Routine training mainly consists of walking the bird. The method is to take the thrush to open fields or gardens every morning or evening for a roam, letting it come into contact with natural scenery and fresh air; this process is commonly called “flushing”. When walking the bird, remove the droppings tray, keep your steps even, apply force evenly, and tilt the cage at an appropriate angle. After walking, hang the bird cage in a quiet place and let it listen to the songs of other birds or sing on its own.