I met one new blog reader yesterday and he was amused with what I talked about.
His intrigue question to me was:
"Pak Harry, how come people are not willing to share the knowledge in this swiftlet farming?"
He went into details about his friend in Kuatan who reside in KL. According to him this very close friend went into swiftlet ranching sometime back and now he is harvesting about 2 kg a month.
Remember they are closed friend for donkey years.
When he wanted to go into the same business he approached the so call "good friend for donkey years".
The answer received was " Sorry I cannot help you. I am under strick instruction not to allow anybody to enter my BH."
There goes a good friend. "A good friend for Donkey years."
The only way out for him to gather more information was via the web.
He stumbled onto my blog and found an interesting piece of article about how I spend three full days of my precious time with two Vietnam Brothers.
Read this: http://swiftletfarming.blogspot.com/2008/11/how-lucky-these-cambodians-brothers.html
"Pak Harry, nobody in this field will do what you did. You spend three days with people whom you have never met to teach them about Swiftlet Farming. You even take them into some BHs that were in operation. Marvellous and unheard of now days"
"From that article, I know you are kind and simply better then my "friend for donkey years" friend of mine. That was why I decided to call you today."
Okay what do you actually want from me?
"I need to get a copy of the Black Cloud and some internal sounds. You see I and a partner started a new BH on the top floor of a shop house. We started running the operation for about three weeks already. Our close neighbor, just at the back of us, started his about three months ago. He seem to have many birds flying in and out while ours nothing. What can be the problems?"
It might be many reasons. Remember your BH is new. Usually in any new BHs the cement smell will be very strong. You need to air the house with a few fans for at least one week. You also need to apply suitable aromas for a new house. The aroma can mask the smell and make the house more pleasant. Apply the aroma only after you have aired the house. Apply on the walls and the floor but focus on those walls that you constructed and plastered with cement layers.
What else?
I told him again about the flying path design. You did your BH by DIY. Do you really know what the birds likes and dislikes? Are the entrance into the roving areas and to the nesting room properly designed? Do you give adequate space for them to turn the moment they enter the house? Do you know that these AF need a minimum of 4 meters by 4 meters room size to be able to turn in a circle?
Since I am not there to check your house internal configuration I would like to stay away from making any comments.
What about the installation of those goodies. You see if you enter a golf tournament you normally will be given a bag full of goodies (towels, golf balls, tees, markers and sometime free drinks). These goodies for those birds are the corners, fake nests, tweeters, aromas and many others. You need to temp them to stay the moment they enter your BH for inspection.
What about the external sound tweeters in the nesting rooms? I believed that placing external sound at the back of the nesting room is something that you should consider. Why? You need to pull the birds to the back of the BH. There is no used if they only entered the front rooms and make a U turn back. Remember the moment the birds passes the external sound tweeters at the entrance hole, and if there are not tweeters inside playing the same external sounds inside, the birds will be at a loss. They loose the frequency of sound that they were attracted to so they will turn back to the original tweeter. So place those external sound tweeters at the right locations until the back of your house.
What about your set of targets in starting a new BH.
I have this formula or should I says a philosophy about how to be a successful BH.
You need to set a target. "I want to work hard with my BH until I get a total of 300nests. I will provide everything that the birds needs and once I reach the target number I will get on with my target on how to make the new babies stays."
You see when you start a new BH you are very much dependant on those wild birds flying in the air. They can be from your next door neighbors or from the caves. So at the beginning you have nothing coming out from your BH. However if your BH reached a target of 300 nests (you can lower this number if you want) there will be 300 X 2=600 babies per cycle. Internally generated. One year you have 1,800 young chicks or in percentage 300%. If you can work you butt to make 100% of these birds to stay then you have won your swiftlet farming game. Yes every year you increase two folds of the number of nests. What happen to the balance 200%? Well let them go but you have 100% with you.
If you have 300 nest and increases by two folds you will get 600 nest for the 12 months period. The next 12 months you will have 1,200 nests, the next 2,400 nests and so on. In no time you will fill up the whole nesting planks.
So the issue here is to place a target. Yes works towards an achievable targets and not doing something haphazardly.
After the one hour meeting he felt so fresh.
"Pak Harry your kind words are like breathing fresh air with lots of oxygen. I felt so good and happy to have met you in person. You have so much to share and I know there are not many like you. Thank you and thank you again."
There you go another happy soul.
Even though I still have the back paint I felt that I have at least helped someone in distress. Hope he will remember me for a long long time......
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