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Sunday, January 18, 2009

When Should I Start Harvesting The Birdnests From My New House ??

I was trying to get those three bags out of my car at LCCT for my trip to Kucing. A call came in from Alor Star, Kedah.

"Hei Harry need some advise about when I should start harvesting my bird nests. I have already 100 nests and I need to know what will be the best time to harvest them."

I stop my unloading works and start to think the best answer to his question. I have only a fraction of a second to reply.

Well, personally I advise you to consider these:

1) Harvest those nests that have be used twice by the birds.

2) The best time harvest those nests is when the baby birds have left their nest. You need to do them within 9 days or earlier. Their mama will lay eggs within 10 days after their babies flew away. They need to keep busy multiplying.

3) Given a choice I will monitor when my birds starts their nest buildings and when those young birds will fly away. During every season these birds will breed at almost the same time. Normally they start building their nest during the beginning of the raining season. Once they lay their two eggs they will incubate and within a few short weeks they eggs will hatch. Once hatch the mama and daddy will take turns to bring in food to feed the babies. After 45 days the babies will fly away. During this flying out period you should observe when the number of empty nests are almost 80%. Once that is in hand, harvest all those with no eggs plus those with two eggs. Leave those with babies.

You need to be fair to yourself. Since you have invested so much time and money, the time have come to harvest those nests.

Whatever you do, you need to weight the need to quickly populate the house with as many nests as possible but you also need to pay your bank.

So choose the best option and be fair to both your tenant (those birds) and yourself.

"Yes Harry, thank you and have a good trip."

Well that was very quick and I hope it will be useful to him.

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