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Monday, June 24, 2013

Officially The Translocation Project Has Begun !!!


The translocation project is officially begun yesterday.

The project started with the negotiation with the eggs supplier, a local University and a BH owner in Denkil, Selangor.

I managed to put the three together and if those eggs hatched as planned we will have the first batch of birds within the next few weeks.

The only setback on the first day was the reduced number of eggs that were harvested from a farm house.

I wanted to start with 500 eggs however the owner claimed that he could only retrieved 388 pieces.

Yes short of 112 pieces.

I have to accept his explanation that there were lesser number of eggs as compared to last weekend.

After counting and stored into those special eggs casing the eggs were quickly transported to an incubation center at Serdang.

I ma hoping that the first baby will be hatched by tomorrow and within 40 days she will be ready to be transported into a specially erected release room in a BH located on a hill in Denkil.

The plan is to count the number of birds currently staying at the selected BH and within one or two weeks after the first released we shall count how many will be returning home to the same BH.

I have ask the University to look into using those RFID tags on each of those birds but they have yet to get the supplier's respond.


It will be very accurate if this RFID transponder can be used in this project.

We can accurately determined how many of them return home and stay after we release them inside the BH.


RFID

A suitable high stregth antenna can be fixed on the entrance hole to detect their entry and leaving.

Each day we can precisely determine their movement in and out.

What we can also do in this project is to determine how those young birds behave on the very first day when they were released.

What time they leave the BH and how long after that they return to rest.

We can also determine how frequent they enter their new BH in a day.

What about how long they stays inside the BH during each entry?

There can be more thing that we can study to really understand about swiftlet.

This trans-location method might  in the long run be the best method to help those BH owners who simply cannot populate their BH due to some unknown reasons.

I have a very strong feeling that this project will meets some expectation that I have inside me.

We shall monitor and see the progress and I hope I will be allowed to share with all my blog readers.

It will be very nice you can help with this research project.

What we need are as follows:

1) Those who can supply swiftlet eggs.  We need about 500 a month.

2) We need more BHs to be used as release center.  To qualify you need to let us inspect your BH and if suitable we need to erect a special release room.

3) Any technical expertise in get the detection system operational will be welcome.  If you are expert in RFID system please let us know.  We need some advices on how to set the counting system.

4) Those who can contribute in buying the RFID system are welcome.  Each transponder is about US5 excluding postage.  If you can buy in volume about 2000 pieces it will be about US3.  We need some kind of financial aid from you.

 Frankly there are more than populating an empty BH with birds.

By implementing this so call method we will be able to prepare an SOP on how to breed swiftlet.

The incubation equipment, the rooms to be used as nursery, the food preparation, method to transport eggs and baby birds, the release room preparation, the method to release the room and so forth.

They need to be documented and if we can get all these thing properly done we will have something to look forward to.

It will be a good thing to our swiftlet industry and we will than be able to DIY on our own.

Let us look at the bright side of all this effort that I managed to put together.

If it works I will be the happiest man on this planet.

If it does not work I will be a bit heartbroken but life as to go on.

What I want you all to know is that I have tried my best.

All for the sake of something that I love very much.  Yes Swiftlet Farming.

Call me at 0177551318 for any support that you can bring to the table.

Or maybe write to harryswiftlet@yahoo.com

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