Excellant Results After My Trial Run !!!

The BH in Kuantan, Pahang which was renovated about 7 days ago is nearly ready however while carrying out the renovation the house was burglarized.

I was a bit unhappy with the incident but life must go on.

I am very sure that after my installation of two VIP rooms, lots of tweeters, a number of  cluster, kite and chandeliers tweeters, lots of waste wood corners and a fake nests (two types).

After getting the sound system in placed we did a trial run to see how those birds reacted.

I administered the Tongkat Ali (external sound)  from 7:00pm till 8:45pm.

Initially the number of birds were little but when it hit 7:20pm those birds were rushing home in the range of thousand per minute.

From the way the reaction to the Tongkat Ali sound I am 100% sure  that this BH is below the birds flying path.

Nearly 90% that passes by stop at the monkey house to inspect the newly revamped BH and many were attracted by the never heard sound.

I was very sure that the number that entered the house were about 1000-1500 birds.

This is a good start and I was looking forward to check the number of fresh bird shit on the floor. 

Yes the number of bird shit on the floor were many but I think I can estimate the number to be around 600 plus.

A very positive trial run and I hope it will be more then double (previously it was about 100 nests) within the next 12 months.

After giving my short report to the owner, he was excited and today he indicated that he wanted to quickly start to vacate the lower floor so that I can continue with the expansion.

KK Seminar Pictures !!!

They Need To Be Treated As Those Little Children !!!

Yesterday while waiting for my Firefly plane to arrive I was taken by Rakanwalit to meet a Dato from Tawau, Sabah.

According to Rakanwalit this Dato currently owned a BH that was converted, about 4-5 years ago, from a warehouse.

His BH now produces about 8-9 kg a month.

I was told that he seem to be very experience with swiftlet farming and wanted to organize some seminar himself.

Wow, 8-9 kg a month, and now wanting to organize some seminar. I think his monthly income is enough to stay comfortably.

Anyway I met him and along with his only daughter who seem to be very interested in swiftlet.

Initially I thought I was going to have a good time sharing his experiences and his findings. 

Anyway I answered all his queries and by now I think he knows that I know so many things about swiftlet as if I was once a swiftlet.

I told him that I was a swiftlet in my last life.  Both himself and daughter have a good laugh about that statement.

Well there were a couple of findings that he shared with me:

1) It seem that one of his secret was in using duck egg white to apply onto those walls.  The moment he applied them, those birds will immediately choose the areas nearby to build their nests.

2) There seem to be little different when he change from duck to chicken egg white.  The result seems to be the same.  I told him maybe he should try with ostrich or turtle eggs white.

3) He found out that the nests at an isolated room at the far end of the house, used to be a toilet, seems to produce larger sized nests as compared to the rest.  There is no specific answer to this weir finding but I told him that this might be due to the wet floor at the toilet or perhaps the bird that stays there were bigger then the rest.

4) He never use those conventional 2"X5" piezoelectric tweeters but those 50 cent type tweeters.  I have tried before but it was not giving any satisfactory result.  In his case it was excellent.

5) He have been using those Fendona insecticides and they seems to be keeping those cockroaches at bay.

6) One query that he posted to me was about why those birds are not going down to the lower floor.  The top floor were with more then 500 nests but the bottom was negligible.  Why Pak Harry? My answer was that the entrance hole was not facing the east.  He pondered and realized that the entrance was facing the north.

7) He was not aware about entitlement given to Sabahan swiftlet farmer in getting young birds every year.  Each year they can purchase about 100 young birds at a very low price.  These birds once released in BHs they will come back to stay, not all, as your permanent tenants.


I hope he enjoyed meeting me and he promised to arrange to a Seminar to be held in Tawau soon.

Same Problem From Same Country Name Vietnam !!!

1st Email:

Title: Need Your Help:

Dear Mr.Harry

 

Nice to meet you

I'm S - Vietnamese, I have 1 BH in Vietnam but it seem fail cause after 1 year operation but only 10 birds stay.

Could you please help me to share some knowledgement for improve it. it's all my saving money, hu hu hu.....

Your helping is my pleasure

2nd Email:


Title: We Need Your Help

Master Sifu Pak, 

At first, I would like to thank you very much for all of your valuable sharing to us.

My name is L, I am a Vietnamese swiftlet farmer and one of your blog readers.

I and my friends built 3 BHs last year in Go Cong, Tien Giang - Vietnam, totally blind under a local consultant.

Unfortunately, in all BHs, there is less then 10 birds staying after 5-months operation. 

Through reading your blog recently, we learn a lot knowledge about swiftlet farming from you with bundle of new idea and of course find out a lot of deadly mistakes in our BHs.

All we have to do now is add more tweeters both internal and external, add more fake nests, better light control, thinking of aroma ...

Two emails with the exactly the same type of problem.  5-10 birds staying after 5-12 months into operation.
 

A delima that is common among many newbies who put all their saving into swiftlet farming hoping to strike the gold.

My advise to both of them is to stop using the same consultant and perhaps try to be your own consultant.  Come to Kuala Lumpur and attend some reliable courses that will turn you into a better swiftlet farmer.

Be independent and learn from those who are sincere enough to help you with your BH.

Visited The BH Whose Owner Walked Into The House LAL ............................

 

While in KK, Sabah I was asked by Rakanwalit to view a BH in Beaufort and perhaps provide the necessary comments on what the contractor have done.

Since the owner ordered all the BH sound system from me I was asked to show the installer how to line up those tweeters.

This same BH was the one whose owner fell down through the LAL (The hole on the floor).  The story I received was that he was in the BH at night when the temple at the other side of the river was playing those fire crackers.  He wanted to check weather his BH is sound proof.

While listening those crackers sound he forgot about those LAL, KEPUK  he fell down the hole. 

He was lucky that his wife and kid were with him. No major injuries but some crack in the skull according to the Doctor.

What surprised me was that just after coming out of the Hospital he wanted to listen to those Marvelous Cloud external sound.  I think he found a new way of using external bird sound.

Now you can use bird sound to cure your illness.  He he he......

The moment I arrived I took a round walk to see the house construction from the outside.

I was happy with the external features but the surrounding needs some clearing.

First the fencing around the BH was not totally completed, the water pool or drain around the BH were not cleaned and there were two tall coconut trees in front of the main entrance hole.

"Please cut those coconut trees so that it will not block the path of those bird when they are coming home plus prevent those owls from using it as an observation tower."

Upon entering I quickly climbed those staircases and straight to the attic.  I wanted to view how those birds will be entering the house and how to get down to the nesting room.

I was very disappointed what I saw.  The house seems to have so many mistakes and it will be a huge task to get the birds even to enter the roving room and the top most floor.

The contractor covered the monkey house with a thick cement slab and open only 1/5 of it.

The other mistakes were:

* The LAL holes were not big enough and not placed at the right locations.

* The nesting planks orientation inside the VIP rooms were running parallel to the birds flying path. They need to be in perpendicular and not parallel.

*There were no water supply pipes on all the floors.  Water is needed to moist and cool the nesting rooms.

*There were no light points in the entire house.  You need lights to perform any maintenance works.  We cannot work in the dark and without light some one will fall down the "LAL" hole again.

*There were no water drainage pipes.  If by any chance the house was flooded due to any pipe burst or leakage the whole floor will be flooded and the only way down and out will be via the LAL.  This will eventually damage those nesting planks at the lower floor.

* The exit hole to reach the roof of the monkey house was blocked in total.  How are we going to climb onto the roof to install those hexagonal tweeters?

* The roof construction was a bit too short.  Yes the overhang was less then 5 inches.  I was expecting 1 meter so that the shadow will help to prevent direct sun light on the BH walls.

* I cautioned the owner about the requirement of wiring hole between floors.  We need to pull those cables from all the floors to the data room.  The hole on the floor needs to be properly done to prevent any possible water seepage to the data room via the cable.  He need to perhaps locked those hole with a 5 inches diameter steep pipe preventing the possibility of water seepage.

* I took all the trouble to get the wire man to know how to install those tweeters.

After the visit plus all the list of things to be reworked the owner and his brother send me a "Big Thank you" for every sincere comment made.

"Pak Harry, thank you for your comment about our new BH.  Sorry that there were so many errors. All your recommendation will be done. We are hacking the monkey house floor now."

Good for him and he was very lucky that I visited the house prior to launching. If not, I told the owner, there will be a huge problem of getting the first bird shit spot on any of the floor.

He wanted my presence when the house is ready to be put into operation.

The Chinese Temple View from the entrance hole at the monkey house.

Just Arrived This Morning And Ready To Go !!!

Sorry for not posting any new article.

I was pushed to the limit while in KK, Sabah and by the time the days ended I will be dead tired.

This morning arrived home at about 2:00am and managed to take a short sleep.  Now ready to go with a few activities that will filled my day.

The Seminar in Sabah Golf & Country Club went pretty well.  There were at least 20 plus attendees and I was told by the organizer that the feedback collected, using assessment form, were "Excellent".

Every participants indicated their satisfaction with the content of the Seminar and many would like to attend again.

Out of the 20 plus attendees two were from The Philippines, two from Sarawak and the rest from Sabah.

"Pak Harry, I don't know how you can stand for more then 8 hours giving the talk.  Every minute your talk we find that you keep smiling and joking with lots of new information as if your energy is unlimited. From the way we observed you are a true and passionate swiftlet farmer."

The organizer, Rakanwalit Enterprise, indicated that they would like to continue arranging for more talks in other town beside KK.

You can see the smile of every participants who wanted to say thank you after the end of the talk.

I am glad for what I have done and I will not ask for more by getting those smiles on every participants face.

I shall continue to do what I was gifted and I am sure all those knowledge that I provide will change the mind set of every person whom I have met or attended to.

Try To Monitor Your BH Progress By Using Proper Scheduler and Log Card !!!

If you want to monitor your BH progress you should have a simple method that will help you to get the result that you wanted.

I was in my hotel room last week resting after a tiring day.

While resting I was thinking of how to get the owner to comply to my plan of visiting the BH in accordance to a proper plan or timing.

I know if given the opportunity the owner will always enter his BH and will scares those wild birds who just entered to inspect or checking his BH.

What came to my mind was to come out with something that will give the owner a kind of guide when to enter the BH and record what was done during each visit.

It must be pasted in the data room where he will be able to see clearly every he enters the BH.

What came to my mind was a scheduler.

I took the trouble to refer to my calender and propose that he should not enter the BH for the next 100 days and after that he should enter the BH only on the 3rd week of the month. to be precise on Thursday of the 3rd week.

It will look like this: 

Sungai Isab, Kuantan, Inspection Scheduler

 Tentative Dates of Inspection

1) First inspection of the BH will be 100 days after the date of BH being put into operation.  The start date is March 22^nd 2011.

2) Subsequent inspection shall be on every 3^rd week of the month on Thursday.

Date schedule will be as follows:

1^st inspection will be on June 30^th 2011. (100 days after start of operation).

2^nd inspection  shall be July 21^st 2011.

3^rd Inspection date shall be August 18^th, 2011.

4^th Inspection date shall be September 22^nd ,2011.

5^th inspection date shall be on October 20^th, 2011

6^th Inspection date shall be on November 17^th 2011.

7^th Inspection date shall be on December 22^nd 2011.

My next idea was to keep a log on what were done and what were the results so far.

Results in this case shall be the number of bird shit spots and the number of nests on the ceiling area.

I printed the two materials and pasted on the wall of the last door entering the nesting room.

When he was there during the last day of my revamp operation, I took some trouble to explain the need of following the scheduler and the logging.

I suggest that you look into this simple idea and I am sure you will have a good idea on what is the progress of your BH every time you visit the place.

It look something like this:

Inspection Of Sg. Isab BH Log Card

Date	Activities	Nests Counts	Birdshits Spots

Date	Activities	Nests Counts	Birdshits Spots