"Pak Harry, is it better to build a BH in Town areas or on and Agricultural Land?"
I have received this same question umpteen times.
My answer will be always the same.
"There is a slight advantage to have your BH in town areas as compared to agricultural land. This is mainly due to security plus those birds feeling much safer from those predators."
The biggest culprit are those owl, snake, geckos and most recently added those hornbill birds.
These predators tend to scare those swiftlet if you do not protect your properties.
You need to start putting those protection as early as you can.
Let me relate this hot news from two friend whom I recently met.
They started swiftlet farming way back in 2003. Their first BH unit was constructed somewhere closed to Keyir Dam in Trengganu.
With some knowledge they managed to get their BH population to about 600 nests.
Then during a nightmare visit they found a very strange thing happening to their BH.
The BH floors were littered with lots of birds heads and legs. Yes their bodies missing. The number of birds were much lesser to the extend of 100 pairs estimated.
It seem that the BH was invaded by those jungle owls. These owls when they have an easy picking they are choosing on which body parts to consume. Their target were the swiftlet bodies and not the heads or those tough legs.
From as many as 600 pairs now only left 100 and getting lesser everyday.
It was their biggest nightmares, they were stunted and do know what to do.
It was also their biggest mistakes for not making any efforts to prevent those owls from entering the BH from the beginning.
"Pak Harry when we entered the BH and saw those decapitated birds heads and legs all over the floor we feel so scared and hopeless. It was like wanted to pack and go and forget about swiftlet farming.
Luckily we met someone who offer some strange advise to prevent future massacre by these wild owls.
What they did was to put three protection into each house (now increased to 4 BHs).
1) On every areas closed to the entrance hole where those owl can purged, we install electrical cable able to give a rude shock it those owl's leg should touch them.
2) We got a whole bunch of those syringe needles used by those drug addict and used a kind of those denture's impression clay which when harden they will not breaks. We mix the denture impression clay with water and buried those plastic syringe tube into the soft clay making sure that the head are exposed. The syringe were placed about 2 inches apart. Once the impression clay harden we can now screw the needle onto those protruded screw heads. We place them on the entrance window of all out BHs.
3) The most interesting and very effective is to tie those nylon fishing lines onto the entrance hole. We placed them about eight (8) inches apart to allow those swiftlets to enter but not those owls.
Until today we have never experience any attack by owls or hornbills.
We learned through experiences and that was the worst.
Those steps works and you should write in your blog Pak Harry"
Donation: I am sure you have learned something after reading this article. If you feel that the lesson learned deserved an encouragement you can contribute a some donation to this account: Yayasan Kebajikan Nah Sabah, 100930010038410 at Allied Bank, Malaysia.
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