VietNamNet Bridge – In 2004, Tran Dinh Nhon, a local resident in Da Lat City announced he succeeded in reproducing red pheasants, a rare wild animal with the scientific name Phasianus colchicus. Over the last seven years, Nhon has been acting as the free consultant about the precious birds.

The garden of Tran Dinh Nhon, located on Ngo Van So Street in Da Lat City, can be considered a mini pheasant bird sanctuary. There one can see different kinds of pheasant birds, from yellow, white to red pheasants.

However, Nhon still cherishes the plan to breed new species of pheasant. “I am planning to collect more new pheasant species and cross-breed them to create new species and avoid inbreeding,” he said.

Nhon is considered the first Vietnamese person who succeeded in artificially reproducing red pheasants. The F1 pheasants have been multiplied everywhere.

Nhon said that in 2000, when he saw a man selling three strange birds, he felt sorry for the young birds and purchased them to breed them. Just several months later, the birds became full fledged and showed colourful feathers.

“I believed that these were not normal ornamental birds, therefore, I tried to look for information about the birds by reading books and discussed with relatives and friends. Then I found out that they are a kind of rare wild animal,” he said.

Prior to that, Nhon had also been breeding two white pheasants which were the gifts of a friends. Therefore, he decided to make the multiplication to preserve this species of bird.

Though Nhon was once worked in the silviculture field, he did not know anything about pheasants. Therefore, he had to read a lot of books and seek information from different sources. At first, he used fowls to incubate pheasant’ eggs. The eggs only hatch after 25 days.

Later, Nhon decided not to use fowls to incubate any more, but he invented in industrial incubator which allows to incubate 100 eggs each time.

As such, with the initial five pheasants, Nhon has rescued the species from extermination.

“Call me when you need information about pheasant!”

After succeeding in reproducing pheasants, Nhon began thinking about sharing his experience with others to preserve the precious bird species. His telephone rings regularly as many people call to ask about the experience to breed birds. Some people asked where to get breeding stock, others asked why their pheasants do not give birth.

“Later, people come to see me, and they can see with their eyes the birds in my sanctuary. As people have learnt experience, the species have become more diversified,” he said.

Not only normal people, who want to keep ornamental birds; but experts from the husbandry institute have also come to meet Nhon. The institute has signed a cooperation contract with Nhon on researching and building the process on breeding pheasants to let the birds to reproduce in the natural conditions.

“The cooperation has brought good knowledge. Researchers from the institute have more knowledge about breeding red pheasants, while I have more knowledge on how to deal with problems,” Nhon said.

“Especially, I have found out that too fat or too skinny pheasants cannot give birth,” he said.

Dr Vo Van Su, former head of the rare animal and biodiversity faculty of the husbandry institute highly appreciated the success of multiplying and reproducing pheasants.

Source: SGTT