Contemplating a couple of black swan leisurely swim in the pool, Mr Nguyen Hoang Tuan – owner of a tourist site in Quoc Oai shares, this kind of bird possess noble and chic beauty.
“They just scare of strange human. As usual, they often show their breathtaking dances on the lake’s surface”, he said.
Tuan spent nearly 40 million VND (~US$ 2000) for this duo after years of ordering. Since black swan is quite rare to find in Vietnam, a few places just sell breeding stocks. Therefore, it’s really challenging for him to buy mature swan.
 

US$ 2000 for this couple of black swans. Photo: VNN

Mr Tran Nhu Giap, owner of one bird garden in Dong My (Thanh Tri, Ha Noi) said, swan was very close to human and gentle once being tamed. However, in Vietnam nowadays, black swan remains such a precious and rare kind of bird.
According to Giap, the appearance of black swan is completely different from the white one. They are totally black, except a few white hair on wing; deep pink beak, long neck, black legs. They live in crowded herd of tens to hundreds ones. At the moment, black swans gather crowdedly in South East of Australia and European countries.
 

Raising black swan is latest pleasure of the Hanoi riches. Photo: VNN

“I love to collect precious birds from all over the world. So far, I have imported black swan from Belgium to satisfy my passion as well as scale this kind of bird up to serve the Vietnam’s market”, Giap shares.
Giap also said, it was easy to raise black swan with popular foods such as corn, rice, bran, water-fern and vegetables. Especially, they have strong physical resistant, hardly diagnose with popular disease of aquatic birds.
He now owns more than ten black swan and try to broaden the flock size.
 According to Giap, despite easy growing, it take a swan two years to mature fully, then start to give birth about three to eight eggs per breeding period. The breeding takes time, therefore the swan’s price in the market gets high also.
In details, 1-3 month-old swan is priced at 5-6 billion VND (~250 US$) while mature one is sold at nearly 20 billion VND (~900 US$).
“At the moment, there are many orders for black swan, however purchasers must wait for about six months for the cygnet and nearly one year for the mature one”, Giap said.