Selection Criterias of a Good Piece Of Land For Your Swiftlet House !!!

This morning received an email requesting for some tips on the selecting criterias for lands suitable for birdhouse ranching.

This was what I replied:

Dear Dennis,

Thank you on your compliments about my blog site.

As for the land characteristics, suitable for swiftlet ranching, please see these tips:

1) The land must be firmed and not those swampy type. A building of 3 stories is heavy. If they are soft like peat land the foundation might be an issue. U need to pile them to ensure that your birhouse remain standing.

2) Not far away from the main road. U needs to move your building materials to your building site. A proper road will be a great asset.

3) The surrounding, if U can, is closed to a kind of river or pond or water sources. If there are padi fields close by then that is superb. Also there are thick forests a distance after the padi fields. U needs to read my blog about swiftlet fooding behaviors to understand why. Go to: http://swiftletfarming.blogspot.com/2007/12/what-is-swiftlet-fooding-behaviour.html

4) The land size must be big enough to retain its title as an agricultural land. According to the land act U can only put in building structure including the fencing not more then 1/3 of the land area. Example if the land is 5,000 square feet then your building structures including of the fencing cannot be more then 5000/3 = 1,666 square feet.

5) It must not be too near to any housing scheme (minimum 100 meters) or a school or a mosque/Indian temple. The sound from your birdhouse might cause lots of complains. The mosque/temple might be a bit noisy with their prayer call. Birds are said to be stress with these noises.

6) Not to be too close with factories that produces smoke or fumes example palm oil refineries or rice processing plant or a steel mill or road tarmac processing factory. The smoke are also said to cause some stress to these wild swiftlets.

6A) Not too close to any airport. The noise from those jet engines are not very nice to their ears. Worse those gapping hole on the front of the engines might suck them in and you know what I mean.

7) The configuration of the land must allow the house to be built as such that the sun path will not be hitting on the larger side of the wall. The sun tend to heat the house a bit too much if it hit the larger surface area of the house.

8) Most important before U pay your deposit is to conduct a bird call test and ensure that there are swiftlets in the area. If U intends to be an active breeder then it is okay.

9) U will still need to ensure that the local council has no objection in building the birdhouse in the area.

I hope the above are good enough for your kind reference.

Thank U.