Breeding And Behavior Of Oriental White Stork(Ciconia Boyciana) In Captivity

On the basis of ex-situ conservation of Oriental white storks for years, this paper was referring more research on reproduction of captive Oriental white stork in northern weather conditions in China. Many experiments were carried in order to find out the effect of these factors such as weather conditions, food, picking up eggs, artificial incubation and artificial breeding et al. With the method of scan sampling and all occurrences recording, types of adult and nestling behaviors were recorded. All data was analyzed in Excel and the SPSS 12.0.The most detail behavior ethogram of adult and nestling of captive Oriental white stork was recorded. The results are as followed:There was significant difference between breeding season and non-breeding season of food intaking,and the food intaking in the breeding season was much more. During the breeding season, standing took up 49.4% of the time-activity budget with breeding taking up 19.7%. Combined, combing feather, feeding, fixing nest, bill clattering and wandering took up anther over 30%.Temperature and relative humidity are the most important factors of the incubation technology. The result showed that the best temperatures ranged from 37.5 to 37.8°C and the relative humidity ranged from 50% to 55% in both prophase and metaphase of breeding season. From then on the temperature should be dropped a little but the relative humidity raise.The vane of primary feathers(p),secondary feathers(p) and alula were all black with no rectrices before the nestlings were 7-day age, and the shaft's color of them grew dusky from 52-day age to 72-day age. As postnatal molt was carrying the nestling down fall off meanwhile the contour feathers and rectrices grew completely after 72-day age. The tertiaris were always white of which the shaft was full of blood vessel. When the nestlings were about 92-day old all feathers grew completely of which the color was the same as adults. Oriental white stork is one of altricial species;therefore there were no feathers all over the whole body when the nestling was born, and the ability of self-adjustment was limited. The process of establishment of homoeothermic ability involved in 3 periods: (1) the fluctuating period, (2) the changing period, (3) the homoeothermic period. The nestling was fully covered with feathers at this time. The body length of nestling increased slower at the beginning, and increased more rapidly in-the 4th and 5th period than any other period, stopped growing since the nestlings were 3 months old. Activities of human was one of the most important factors that effect the nestling's weight, as the food increased the weight increased. Resting was the most frequent behavior of the time-activity budget during the nestling growing periods which took up over 86.78%;Body care, tweeting ,locomotion ,gaping and pecking combined took up over 13%;Behavior of 'Others' were less than 0.1%.