#How to distinguish between shou belt bird and purple shou belt #China has two kinds of shou belt and purple shou belt birds, let's first talk about the distinction:
1. Body color
Males and females look different. The male itself exhibits two shades of color – white and reddish-brown. In the reddish-brown form, the upperparts are reddish-brown instead of white. The lower part of both forms is white. Males have long tail feathers up to 27 centimeters long, and two central tail feathers up to 30 cm long and drooping. The head is shiny blue-black and has a towering black crown. There is a dark blue to black throat, bright blue circles, and a black iris.
The female has a grey throat , a reddish-brown upperparts and back , and a white underparts. They lack the long-tailed feathers of males. Unlike males, with different throat colors and eye circles, females have gray throats and faint eye circles.
Male sub-adults look very much like females, but have black throats and blue circles. Young males have reddish-brown body feathers and short tails. They grow long tails in the second or third year. Adult males have bright reddish-brown or predominantly white upperparts. Some birds show some degree of neutrality between reddish-brown and white. Long-tailed reddish-brown birds usually do not have axial stripes on their wings and tail feathers, while in white birds, there are axial stripes, and sometimes the edges of the wings and tail feathers are black
The female bird of the shou belt and the male and female bird of the purple shou belt will not change the coat color for life, but the male bird of the shou belt is not the same, there are two colors of chestnut red and white, chestnut red is the body color of the young bird, white is the body color of the elderly bird, the red male bird after the age of 4 the feathers begin to slowly change from red to white, but the male bird of the purple shou belt does not have this phenomenon, but the lifelong purple, all in all, the female birds of these two birds are lifelong coat color unchanged.
2. Body type
The shou belt is a little larger than the white-headed man, the purple shou belt is slightly smaller than the shou belt, and the tail feathers are slightly shorter than the shou belt. In short, the males of both species have two long tail feathers.
3. Temperament
Both the purple shou belt and the shou belt are more fierce and have a sense of territory, but the shou belt is more docile than the purple shou belt.
Let's talk about my own breeding experience:
I raise a shou belt, and is a mother bird, the staple food is high-quality point chin material (I use 40 yuan a pound) and Taobao bought fresh dead bees with a mashing bowl into insect residue mixed feeding, add a small handful of live mealworms and a small piece of cucumber every day, I feed found that the shou belt eats less every day, so the feces are also less, it is clean 2-3 times a week, drinking water is always clean and unlimited supply, because this bird is more active in the wild, so it is most appropriate to feed with a wide bird cage for flying and dancing, Female birds can be raised in ordinary medium flocks of birds, and male birds can be raised in wide bird cages that are more than 60 cm high. If the site is large enough, try free range culture.
