Have U ever thought that harvesting of Birdnest is an art. A legacy that , if carefully digested, will eventually helps you to rake in a bountiful of cash and at the same time increase your birdhouse population tremendously.
After reading those beautiful books, I would like to summaries these relevant harvesting techniques:
If U own a birdhouse in Indonesia, you have at least four streams of incomes. It is of course from the nests ( main income) but there are three more that they can generate income. The one that U have never thought of are selling of the eggs, the baby birds and last but not the least the birdshits.
Yes in Indonesia, they practise in increasing the birds population by incubating the swiftlets eggs and manually feed the babies. In this way, they buy swiftlet eggs and babies from those owners who have excess eggs and babies for sale.
The birdshits are mainly used as aroma to lure the birds into new build houses plus as fertilizer.
Okay let me touch on the three types of birdnest harvesting.
If U remembered my last topic on " How Many Times Can U Harvest The Birdnests A Year?", I did described the whole birds breeding cycle. I mentioned that the birds after finding a suitable mate will start looking after a suitable place to build their nest. When they found one, the male sill start to build using his saliva. The female will help and when the nest is acceptabled the female will sit in the nest and start to lure her mate to come and copulate (make love). They will make love for at least 5 to 8 days before the 1st eggs is laid and followed by one more within 2 days after the 1st.
Immediately after laying the two eggs, the birds will take turns to incubate the eggs. Of course they will still go out to eat in the day time.
The above informations is very important in my next explaination on the three types of harvesting which are:
a) Harvest Before The 1st Egg Being Laid.
This is one of the most preferred harvest by swiftlet ranchers. Reasons being, the nests are clean and without any dirt, feathers, shits and etc. The nest value is at the highest since processing time are shorter.
The birds after finding that their nest are missing, will immediately built a new one.
The setback is that they are lighter due to lesser quantity of saliva. The birds being forced to build a new nest which will effect the bird's health especially the female birds carrying the eggs but without a nest to lay.
b) Harvest After The Two Eggs Were Laid.
This method of harvesting is done once the two eggs are laid. U must never harvest when only one egg is in the nest. If U still continue to harvest, the chance of the
2nd egg inside the female swiftlet will most likely kill the motherbird and will cause lot of stress to the male.
The advantage doing this method is said to be that U can do them four times a year. The nest are more complete is its construction, thicker and the nest quality is at its best.
The disadvantage is that the bird population will decline since there aren't any egg to be hatched and it is advisable to hatch these eggs manually using incubator and have workers to raised the babies.
c) Harvest After The Babies Leave the Nest.
The third method is to harvest once the babies leave the nest.
Advantage is that your bird population will increase since the babies leave the nest and normally they will stay and add to the population.
The disadvantage is that the nests, after breading the babies, are dirty due to contamination by bird feathers plus dirt from the food and baby shit. The nest quality will be affected.
So which method should you apply to your birdhouse?
My opinion, might not be the only solution, is a combination of all the above.
U should have a prepare or adorpt a suitable harvesting procedures that calls for maximum income while the population will also increased. They called it as "Sustainable Birdnest Harvest Management".
During the early part of the birdhouse, U should let them multiply to the maximum. U should install as many fake nests as you can. You should not harvest any until the house have at least 50 nests in operation.
Once the number is achieved, U now need to start giving each nest a kind of color code. The code is actually a strip of color marker that are easily stick just below each nest.
Use red color for those nest that are with baby birds.
Blue color for those with one or two eggs.
White for those that are without any egg or just being build/in the process of building.
U now keep the log of these numbers in a book kept in the birdhouse.
During the nest visit U now will begin your harvesting operation by only harvesting those whose babies are no longer in the nest. Yes collect only those with the red color marker but are empty. This indicate that the babies have left and these babies will be your new nest producers.
After harvesting, U now need to redo the color marking operation. Red for those with babies, blue with egg(s) and white without any egg or new.
Do the same method until the nests count reach say 100 or 200 nests.
Once this is reached U can start the combined harvesting method.
U will harvest those that are labelled red but empty (no more babies) plus those white labelled nests but with no egg in them.
U do this until the total number of nest reached say 500 nests.
Once it reaches this new number, U can actually harvest intelligently in giving U the optimum number that will give U a good harvest and at the same time the population will continue to grow.
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