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Monday, February 18, 2008

Birdhouse Renovation: When Is The Best Time To Do Them ???


There are three basic reasons why you carry out renovations on your birdhouse.

They are as follows:

1) You wanted to improve the microhabitat of the house in order to make the house more ideal to your swiftlets. This have to do with the air humidity and temperature.

2) You wanted to renovate the house due some any kind of damage happened to the house or you need to reconstruct of certain parts of the birdhouse. Some examples are: a) The house was leaking b) The wood panels are attacked by termites c) Your birdhouse entrance is wrong d) You wanted to add more light to the house e) You wanted to increase the number of speakers and etc.

3) You wanted to extend the room or add an additional room.

All these renovations if are not carefully planned will cause stress to your tenants (swiftlets) and they might move out ....

The best time to carry out these works are as follows:

A) Start your works in dry season and not the rainy season.

B) Do your work during the time when the birds are out foraging (search for food) between 8.00 am till 3.00 pm.

C) When you do the renovation, make sure you do them in stages and in small portion. Try not to do the extreme. If you do the extreme you might stress the birds and they might not be long in your house.

D) Your workers need to be carefully selected and know how to work. They should be informed in advance on how critical that they work quitely and they will avoid smoking in the house.

E)If you have more then one job to be completed, it is recommended that you give a kind of gap about two days before you start the other job.

F) Try to limit the number of days to about one week. Try not to carry out the job for months.....

G) If you need to carry out more renovation jobs, it is recommended that you allow a gap of at least 2-3 months for the next round of renovation jobs. This 2-3 months period will allow your swiftlets to adarpt to the new surroundings.

Remember, if you are not carefull, you might loose many of those swiftlets that you have been working for. Try to minimise the disturbances and choose the right dry period to carry out the renovations.

You determine the stress level on the birds and my advise is Be Carefull all the time ............

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