Mynah Birds

[4HAND]

Growing up my best friend's family had a pet Mynah named Charley.He was an incredible mimic,very funny and personable.It seems to me you rarely if ever see these birds for sale and doing a search here on BB I wasn't able to come up with much.Have laws been passed forbiding ownership?Are they difficult to breed?Anyone have experience with a pet Mynah?
Tena

[Monica]

From my understanding mynahs may have difficult diets.... although I don't really know for sure. They just haven't really picked up in popularity although many people who have them love them. I haven't met one but then again I may have forgotten! I've seen quite a few species...

[4HAND]

I found out that thousands of these birds die from iron storage disease [hemochromatosis] by age ten.
Tena

[birdsnreps]

they do need special diets, but several breeders breed them successfully. if you feed them correctly, and it is possible, they should live to be about 20+ years if i remember correctly. the breeder i bought my hornbill from breeds mynahs, some of them he sells as breeders, and others he handfeeds so they are tame. his all talk and everything, when people talk about their pet mynahs, they always say how wonderful they are as pets, ive never really heard anything bad about them.

[4HAND]

Yvonne,if it's not too much trouble,could you provide a website or E-mail address for that breeder?
Tena

[birdsnreps]

ill pm it to ya!! hes a great guy, very knowledgeable, im glad i got my hornbill from him :)

[phatgun]

Mynah bird its common in Indonesia!!!

[huntress]

I remember them in pet stores all the time as a kid. Keeping them is allot like keeping a Toucan isn't it? Thats why they probably didnt do so well. Hubby says they just look like a crow, lol, he says just get a crow,lol.

[asurademon]

I highly recommend going to Softbills for sale and doing a search for mynahs if you want to get one. There are actually some mynahs for sale right now.

Keeping a mynah is similar, though not the same as keeping a toucan from what I have heard. I know mynahs like toucans need a low iron diet, because they tend to suffer from iron storage disease. Toucans aren't very difficult to care for at this point with the low iron diets that are now available (and diets continue to improve), so long as you know what fruit is ok and what is not, and don't give them "people food". I don't know that mynahs are as easy to care for as toucans, but the low iron diets available will make it a lot less likely that they'll die of iron storage (assuming you aren't feeding other high iron foods such as red meat, and you are also not offering the bird citrus or tomatoes).

[abnmojo]

I found a mynah bird for sale in the Northern Virginia area at a bird store. Featherheads I think was the name. I do believe they have a website. This is the store where I purchased my red-fronted kakariki, so this place deals in 'different' species of birds than I can find down where I live in North Carolina. They have a Cape parrot for sale for goodness sake.

Dynah the mynah bird was my best friend for my visit. She loved to sit on my shoulder and preen my hair, and was quite fond of blueberries (her favorite word). Very tame bird. Didn't mind me giving her scratches. Her black feathers had an irridescent sheen to them - very pretty bird. Only $1500....

ouch on that price. If Dynah had been $500 or so i would have taken her home with me. She was a ton of fun to hang out with.

I was told by the staff that I was rare, and Dynah 'picked' me - she didn't want to sit on anyone else's shoulder for very long nor liked it when they tried to scratch her. She constantly flew from her perch or another customer's hands and landed on my shoulder.

One thing I noticed about mynah birds is this...... Lets talk about poop. Lots of poop. Often. I know, I know, if you are into birds then you gotta be able to deal with some poop but this thing was a pooping machine. If an eclectus is at one end of the poop spectrum (due to very long degistive tract) then mynah birds are at that the opposite end. I think I got pooped on a half dozen times. Just tossing that out there for you all to know about....... for what its worth.

From my short time with the bird (two visits in two days) she was a great bird and would make a great companion bird. Not something to be kept locked in a cage. I wish I had the cash to be honest, that bird was special.