Wanted Advise On Forced Havest !!!

"Pak Harry,I wanted to do the force harvest to my 2 yrs old BH with 100+ nests.

How about the eggs and young bird?

Regards"

An Email message received from one of my blog reader yesterday.

My sincere advise to him is to be very careful with the operation.

First he must understand in depth about what is force harvest.  The pros and cons plus when will be the best time to carry out the operation with little damage to those young birds.The history how it begins and why suddenly the nests number jumps up. 

While there are a few advantages e.g you will get a sudden jump in the nests population just after the harvesting it might also make the birds move to some other BHs. This usually happen when you continue the force harvest too frequent.  Too frequent is like every month or more then 2 times a year when your BH nests population is still very low.

The key point is to properly understand how to plan and execute the operation so that there will be a minimal negative impact but lots of positive results.

The term "Force Harvest" is directed to an exercise when the house owner or maybe a burglar entered the BH and remove every nests inside the house with or without its contents.

The immediate effect, which no one have ever understood why,  will be a sudden jump in the nests number within a short time after the event (3-4 months).

I was made to understand that when a forced harvest was done many of these birds will not be staying in the BH for a couple of days.  They became scared or stressed and normally will stay at your neighbor's BHs.  During the few days stay, I presumed,  they will be telling their fate to their friends and that invite other birds to move in to help in getting the population back.

In most cases the number of nest increased will be about 25 -35 %.  I was once inform by one special person, happened to be a Medical Doctor and my regular blog reader,  who carried out simultaneously in his three BHs.  His average increase in nests number was about 40%.  One of BH gained more then 75%.

"Pak Harry you are genius.   After reading your article some time back I decided to perform the forced harvest on all the three BHs and after three months they came back with vengeance. One of the unit the number of nests increased was as high as 75% while the other two was about 30-35%.  Thank you for being so honest and sharing your knowledge."

There was one occasion when I gave a talk with Dr. Riduan in Ipoh, Perak.  During the lunch break I was with one of the participant and he sound very upset when his BH was burglarized.

"Pak Harry, they took nearly everything. Big and small sizes and they threw those young birds and the eggs all over the floor. I feel very sad until today."

How long ago was that? I asked him.

"Hmm about 4-5 months ago, Pak Harry."

Okay what happened now?  Do you see any nests population increment? 

"Oh yes sir.  The nests population now increased by about 20-25%."

I think you should thank the burglar, my friend.  Try to look at the good side of the coin.  Once your BH is being burglarized, you should be very proud of it.  You are now the chosen one.  Your BH now passed the mark between just so so to good. Those burglars will not risk their life just to enter a so so BH.  They choose the best or among the best.  Your BH is among the best.

"Yes Pak Harry I think you are right.  Among the many BHs around me I am one of the best."

Well coming back to adopting force harvest, I sincerely would like to advise those newbies to be very careful.

Never do the force harvest more then twice a year.  This is also subjected to the number of nests in your BH. If your nest population is less then 100 do only once a year or perhaps once it touches 300 nests.

My next advise is to combine the force harvest with "Conducive Regeneration" technique.  By combining the two you will gain more benefits.  Try to read the article by clicking the bold words.

The idea is to properly plan your force harvest during the period when most of those young birds have flew away and at the same time do some egg removal to get your BH with lots of young baby sounds during the flying out time of those young birds. If there are young birds you might want to introduce those fake nests for tamperory housing for them.

If you can combine the two it will be marvelous.

Try to look at the time frame during the month of September every year. Observe the young birds about to leave the house.  Once they are able to fly that will be the best time.  Also take note that the young birds will take their first flight on the 45 day, plus minus, of their life.  They need to fly out to search for own food because their parent will stop feeding them.  Once all can fly your force harvesting exercise will not kill too many young birds.

As for the eggs, I believed it will not be as bad as the young babies. You can perhaps pass these eggs to those who incubate them and hatch for own use or turn the eggs into aroma.  I remember at one time I used to buy some raw eggs to throw onto the floor to create a natural aroma smell inside an old BH.

Remember try to plan your force harvest properly.

Best of luck to those who have right number of nests and I am sure you will see some improvements in your nests growth by following the above technique.