How To Select The Right Sounds !!!

Sorry for not writing for a few days.

Today I wanted to write about this question on how to select the right sound for your BH.

This morning read a message from Sarawak and this sender wanted to know which sound to be used for his new BH.

He purchased a set of 5 sounds in 2011 and now his BH is ready to operate.

Well he took more than 3 years to complete his BH.

I cannot remember the transaction even in total.

What I told him was something like this.

What you should do is to get your sound system at your running.

The external tweeters were installed and connected to your amplifier.

Run the five sounds one by one for about 5-10 minutes.

Try to give a gap of about 5-10 minutes when you change the sound.

Before you start the testing get a piece of paper and write the name of all the five sounds.

You need to provide adequate space to record the effectiveness of these sounds.

Once you play them try to check how many birds responded to the sound and how many enter your entrance hole.

You need to carry out the procedure one by one and record on the piece of paper.

Once you have completed try to list which one is the most effective and which are those that are not effective.

The effective sounds will be your main target to pull those birds inside your BH.

These selected sounds have some kind of attraction to the birds specie found at your BH location.

So you now have the best, the good, the average and the least effective.

Chose the best and the good as your BH sound.

Try to play them for a few months and once they are no more effective change to the second best.

Remember the one you have just changed can be reused after a few months.

Try this method and I am sure you will have some nests inside your BH.

I also advised him to get more new sounds.

After three years I do have some new sounds that might be suitable for his BH.

Call 017 7551318 for more details.

Poor Humidity Can Be a Big Problem To Your Birds !!!

Case No 1):

This young bird must be ready to fly however her leg was entangled on the nest where she was hatched.

The poor bird must have died due to starvation.

Usually if they have nothing to eat for about three days they will die of starvation.

The cause of this mishap is dryness or low humidity in the BH.

The low humidity causes the nests to crack.

These crack opening become a kind of trap and waiting for some thing to happen.

If these young birds are not careful and accidentally their leg are caught that it.


Case No 2):

Two nests one below the other.

If you observe the two nests you will find that the top nest looks older as compared to the lower nest.

The top nests seems to be yellowish and lot of cracks.

The lower nest seems like a new nest with whiter and smoother surface.

What I think happen here was that the owner of the top nest abandoned the old nest and erect a new one just below the old nest.

Just imagine if the nest on the top is still with a tenant.

The nest below will be bombarded with bird shit and there is no way the baby inside it will survive.

The lesson we learn from this case is that swiftlet are smart and will abandon their old nest if they feel not safe to start a new family.

When you see this you know that those old nests must be remove or harvest.

Today On My Way Up North !!!

Today planned to drive up to Sungai Patani to inspect a number of BHs up there.

Most of these units were revamped and hopefully doing okay.

Among the many the one whole land around it was planted with fruit trees will be my favorite.

Planned to be up here for a couple of days and will try to finish all the necessary inspection.

Hope to be back to Kuala Lumpur by this weekend.

If you are from the North and would like to meet me in person please call this number 017 7551318

Some New Areas That I Wanted To Test In The Next Revamp BH !!!

I have finally found out that a 3D printing company is located not very far from my house (15 mins drive).

What I did was to submit to them my sketch and wait for their respond.

Three days ago I email a short message plus a few sketches which I wanted this company to draw it in 3D for my use.

On the same day I received a reply.

She is only free after 5 pm and I now plan to meet her to discuss on a few 3D printing projects.

The first will be the 90* corner fake nest.

The second will be the 180* fake nest.

The third will be a corner cover that can be used to cover the 90* corner put will produce 180* nest.

My idea is to contract the design work with them and produce at least 10- 15 pieces for each product.

Once that is done will carry out some test at a number of BH that is under my care.

If the 3D printed product are accepted by those wild birds I plan to buy a printer so that I can produce them at home.

This is some interesting idea that I have been thinking of doing for quite some time.

The 3D printing company seems to start this kind of arrangement recently and I think this will benefit a lot of people.

If everything goes to plan I will bring this gadget and display at the next swiftlet farming seminar.

Let me tidy up the sample with the company this coming week and let see how fast they can come out with the printed material.

My Next Revamp Operation Might Be At This 4 Stories BH !!!

My next project might be sometime in late November 2014.

The project will be about 5 hours drive from Kuala Lumpur.

The four stories BH was inspected about one and half years ago and the owner keep reading my visit report with him.

His sad stories about how he started the BH and failed can be a good subject to talk about.

This can be used as a good lesson but at the same time a very sad story when the local bank rejected his loan application to revamp the BH.

I set down with the owner a number of times and every time we met I learned something from him.

He was an ambitious man however he fell into a  kind of trap.

When he first started about four years ago he was not that lucky.

He was recommended to a guy who claimed to be very well versed in swiftlet farming.

The very strange thing was that the "consultant' was recommended to him by the local agricultural department.

We managed to secure some financial assistance from the local Agriculture Bank and handed over all the money to the so called consultant.

The four stories BH was done to the best knowledge of the so call consultant however after 3 years into operation the number of nests inside was less then 10.

After the poor performances he engaged a number of well known local consultants to look into his problem.

All their effort went by without significant progress.

On the third year he came to know about a Seminar conducted at UPM he enrolled but it clashes with his trip to Mecca.

He forced his son-in-law to attend.

His son-in-law also owned a BH and facing nearly the same problem.

He was briefed by his son in law and requested UPM to inspect his BH.

I was given the green light by UPM to inspect his BH.

I wrote a long report to him and told him what I feel was wrong inside.

With the report in hand he approached the Agri Bank and submitted a loan application to revamp a BH that was initially finance by the same bank.

The Bank manager told him that he should have stayed away from swiftlet farming.

"This business is only for rich people and you should not be involve in this line."

This is the kind of bank managers who was elected to help financing agricultural project.

He was pissed with the bank attitude towards his problem and his only choice now is to use his own saving.

This is why I always says that Swiftlet Farming is a "Neglected Industry".

These so call officers are not committed or find a way to solve the miserable guy with a failed BH.

In the mean time his son in law who attended my talk took a positive way.

He approached me for help and quickly engaged my service.

After less than 3 weeks his nests population doubled.

The lower floors that were never visited by those swiftlet are now with a number of nests.

Something that never happened before.

Three Feedback From Three Different BH Owners !!!

The best person who can tell you that your idea is working is your blog followers.

Last week three person "Whatsapp" their findings after following my recommendations.

The first came from Kuala Trengganu, Trengganu.

His message was like this:

The guy above met me while I was visiting Felda Belara in Kuala Trengganu.  He sat down with me and fortunately recommended his friend to allow me to inspect his sick BH.

The same day I met both to submit my visit report.  He listened to what I have in mind and followed some of my ideas.  One of them was the use of fake nests.

Now he sees the improvements.

This came from Keningau, Sabah :

Frankly I have never meet this Keningau BH owner.

We have be talking and exchange messages via whatsapp.

He diligently followed my recommendations and his BH nest population now hit 100.

At one time he wanted to give up the BH.

Another guy from Kota Kinabalu uses the 2X super pheromone.

His last message was like this:

I think without my inspection he is doing well but what if I was given the chance to pin point to him what is wrong inside his BH?

After the message he did invite me to come over for my expert service.

I told him that his decision is wise and let me help him to increase the nests population at a much better rate.

I think I can increase the monthly growth from 5 to perhaps 15 or 20 a month or more......

I am planning to fly to KK soon.

If you own a BH and is facing difficulties in populating them just call me at 017 7551318.

My opinion will be worth every penny that you pay.

Call me now !!!

The Corner Covers Were Taken Down !!!

Just wanted to share with you all the pictures comparing before and after the revamp on the nesting planks were done.

I wrote this article about the important of creating more 90* corners on your nesting planks crossings some time back and provided you with this picture:

(Most people think that this should be the right way to install those corner covers)

The above nesting planks arrangements are common in many BHs.

The arrangement  looks okay to most BH owners but not to me.

You need to understand how important are those 90* corners to those young couples.

They are young and never have the experience of building a nest before.

The 90* corners will become their favorite and you need to allow these corners opened and not closed.

(After the removal of those 90* corner covers and installed with 90* corner fake nests)

My personal opinions (I might not be right all the time) are something like these:

1) Try not to cover all the 90* corners.  Open them up especially those corner covers that are installed facing the birds flying in path.

2) Once you have the 90* corner covers removed you need to offer some help to those young birds to quickly adopt it by installing corner fake nests.

3) You should allow the couple to use the 90* fake nests for at least one breeding season and you need to remove and replace with a suitable 90* corner covers.  The word suitable corner covers must be fully understood.

4) I defined suitable 90* corner covers as a gadget that will prevent the couple to built any nests that will make your nests other than 180* nests shape.  Yes try not to use the common curved wood corner covers.

5) The curved wood corner covers will produce a 130* nest shapes and this will not increase your raw nests price that much.  If I am not mistaken 130* curved nests fetch the same price as 90* corner nests.

6) Use your head a bit and think of a way to get your BH nests, all of them, to be 180* shape nests.  This will be one of the simplest way to get the  right raw nest price.

7) My idea is to use stainless steel plate as your corner covers.  You need to make sure that they are properly cut and provided with countersunk holes.  My main reason why I choose stainless steel plate is because it will not be dissolved by the nests as compared to aluminium plates.  I have seen aluminum plate with holes once those nests were harvested.

8) Those steel plates must be installed properly so that the nests produced will be closed to 180* shape nests.

Try to imagine what I wanted to preach to you and don't take short cut methods.

Yes you need to plan the best for your BH.

If you have a proper plan only then you will reap the optimum benefits.

No one will tell you how to optimize your BH except me.

Call me at 017 7551318 if you do have any question about this highly informative article.

Tanjung Karang Revamp Operation Finally Over !!!

(The two bazookas were located closed to each other.  One facing the flying path home and the other directed to a BH with the most number of birds)

After almost 10 days the three floors were completed.

The rooftop and its Monkey house was the first area that was upgraded.

The water ponds were cleaned, dried and later flooded with fresh water.

The monkey house now is with those hexagonal, power, pole and bazooka tweeters installed.

Once done and played with two different external sounds the birds were all over the BH.

The third floor was our next target.

A number of partitions were taken down and the connecting doors were reduced to about 3 feet wide.

The internal tweeters were rearranged to have more of those cluster tweeters.

To pull birds into the floor a number of external sound chocolate tweeters were introduced.

I did installed about 150 fake nests on the floor.

Two humidifiers activated using high end humidistats were installed.

Tested and they work perfectly.

On the 6th day we moved to the middle floor and the floor seems to have to many rooms and its connecting doors were too big.

A few of partition walls were taken down and selected doors were reduced to 3.5 feet wide.

The internal sound tweeters were rearranged with lots of cluster tweeters.

I created two VIP rooms and both were installed with lots of those polystyrene fake nests.

The rooms now looks very attractive to lure those wild birds.

Three chicken coop humidifiers were installed with a humidistats auto starter shared among the three units.

Tested and all the gadgets were running well to the preset RH%.

This BH has been into operation for almost 4 years and the BH seems to be very dry.

I told the owner to set the humidity a bit on the high side to help creating the wet environment.

I did wet the walls and the floors with cleaned water a number of times.

The wetness here seems to be under control.

The lowest floor was a bit less problem.

We got it done a ready on the 10th day and a few unnecessary partition walls were removed.

My staff created the VIP room arrangements and it looks fined with me.

We also installed 3 chicken coop humidifiers control by one humidistats.

Tested and runs perfectly.

A few buckets of Mutiara aroma were used to make the BH smell nice and attractive.

Poured some of the aroma on the walls and mixed it into the humidifiers water containers.

This BH will now become the best and well ready to be populated.

I predict that within the next few months it will doubled in its nests population.

The owner father keep begging me to help him to populate his BH.

So far he saw with his owned eyes how those birds were flying to the BH and entering the BH.

If he is lucky he will one day get his 10 kg per months target.

If you have a similar BH nest population problems call me at 017 7551318.

TK BH: How To Tackle Dryness Problems !!!

(High end Humidistat German Made)

Most BH after 3-4 years into operations will face this very common problem : Dry BH.

When your BH is too dry, the nests will crack and is not safe for staying.

Beside with serious cracks all the nests inside your BH will also be very brittle or easy to break.

Remember those nests that were erected cannot handle more than one bird (fully matured) staying inside at any one time.

So you can imagine those two baby birds growing inside the small nest and within 4-5 weeks their body size will not be able to stay inside but to move to the side of the nest.

They literally cling to the nest wall.

Can you imagine what will happen if the nest is too brittle and lots of cracks on them?

The two fellows will have a tough time to stay alive.

If they are lucky they might survive and fly out of their home on the 45th day.

If they are not lucky the nest wall will break and both or one of them will fall to the floor.  That will be the last day of their life.

There are many more hazards when those nests starts to crack or some portion torn apart.

One very common danger is to have their leg entangled at those holes or cracks.

If they cannot release their leg it will be their end too.

I have seen this type of death in many dry BHs I have visited.

You can safely observed that the floors are totally dry and nearly all the humidifiers were no longer operating.

If you should hose the floor with water I can guarantee you that within a short minutes the water will become dry as if you have never hose them.

This is why all BH owners should be concerned about.

If you allow your BH to continue be dried there is a very strong possibility that your young birds will not return to their birth place.

In their mind they know that the BH where they were born is dangerous and is not fit to be their house.

Your dry BH will soon experience either a stagnant nests population or in many cases the nests numbers starts to reverse.

TK BH faced a very similar situation.

The first time when he talked to me on the phone he did mentioned about his dilemma.

"Pak Harry at first the nests starts to grow very well but after 3-4 years they literally stop growing."

The moment he mentioned the word 3-4 years I know the possible reason.

Yes after 3-4 years his BH became too dry and he did not take any measures to ensure that it is wet especially in the BH (his BH rooftop and monkey house roof was with water pool).

I suspected a few things but I told myself to carry out an inspection and tell him what I know about why his nests numbers stop to grow.

First on my list was that all his humidifiers were not functioning.

I was totally wrong.  He did not have a single humidifier on the floor.  Oh oh !!!

There was no water pool or wet floor too.  Oh oh !!!

So how did he wet his BH?

He uses those rubber hose hung on the wall of the BH (inside) and connect to the water pipe via a garden water gadget timer.

The rubber hoses were drilled with tiny holes so that the water that flows inside will leak out and wet the walls.

Hmm  something very new and it seems to be not working.

I finally discovered that he did not change the operating batteries and all his gadget were not working.

I told his to discard the idea and move to the very conventional method using those chicken coop humidifiers.

The only different is that I forced him to use a high quality humidistats (German made) to control the humidity.

Each floor will not have three humidifiers except the top with only two.

Each floor will be using a humidistat.

Beside making sure the humidifiers will do its duties I added a few ideas on how to get the BH wet.

What I told him was to clean all those dirt found on each floor and after the cleaning operation you literally spray water on the walls and the floor.

Do this every day for about three to four days twice in one day.

The water applied will be either absorbed by the cement or evaporates due to the heat inside the cement walls and floors.

After the three days you will find that the water will not be easily dried as the first few days.

They will make the floor remain wet and the BH now will be humid.

The humidifiers will now served you better and will not be into operation mode too often.

This wetting operation should be done every three to four months especially once your BH crossed its 3-4 years of operation.

Remember once you do this wetting operation your BH nests now will be wetter and less cracks.

This will encourage those young birds to return to your BH to start their family.

You can ignore this special recommendation and you will find that most of your young birds will not return home once they took their first flight out of your BH.

Please proof that I am wrong !!!

For more explanation please call 017 7551318

Using Bazooka Tweeters For Some Specific Purposes !!!

(Tentative Locations of the 2 Bazooka Tweeters)

Have you ever try to use those bazooka tweeters ?

They can be useful if you know how to effectively use them.

What can be the special reasons why you should try to install one or two on your roof top areas?

My answers can be something like these:

1) You wanted them to fly down from on their way home.

2) You wanted your neighbor's young birds to take notice of your BH.

3) Your BH is simply situated in an open area and you wanted your external sound to cover more areas.

For Tanjung Karang (TK) BH, I urged the owner to consider installing two bazookas to attack  point number one and two.

One very strong point about TK BH is that its location.

I came to the conclusion that it is situated below the birds flying path when they are returning home.

The only weakness is the number of them flying right above it.

My estimate is around 500 or so.

There is a very strong chance that another 500 flew way up above and are not able to detect the current external sound used.

The best way to improve the number is to use a long range bazooka tweeter and shot the most probably location where they can hear the external sound.

For this TK BH the direction is at the North 30* East.

The second reason have something to do with the neighbor's BH.

I was told that two of the four BHs located about 100-400 meters do have a sizable population.

My idea is to use one of the medium range bazooka to lure those young birds from the neighbor's BH.

I need to check which of the four BHs are doing well (with a lot of birds entering the BH in the evening).

Once that is done I will zoom the medium range bazooka towards the rooftop.

The whole idea is to lure those young baby birds that took their first flight out of the BH.

These young birds are considered to be very easily lured since they are always wanted to explore new things around their areas.

If for some reason the birthplace is not well looked after, for example too dry, they will find a good reason to move to a better home.

Let us hope that the BH selected is in a deplorable condition and it owner do very little to make sure that the internal environment are wet, cool and dark.

If these young birds wanted to find a better house its going to be this revamped BH just nearby.

Will take some photos to show you all on how the two bazooka tweeters are installed.

Tanjung Karang BH: The Monkey House Tweeter Arrangements !!!

Once completed the tweeters arrangements at the BH monkey house will look something like the above.

I have added two hexagonal tweeters, 10 power tweeters and a number of pole tweeters on those cement poles.

What I am waiting for are the two bazookas that will be directed to two BHs on the East and the North.

These two BHs seems to have the most number of birds around the area.

One will be the long range while the other will be the medium range.

The owner seems to be very excited with this special gadget.

He wanted to install them for some time but do not know how to.

Will take some pictures when they are installed.

Tanjung Karang BH: Give Those Birds The 90* corners !!!

One very sure method to trap those new couples that entered your BH are those 90* corners.

Those who think that by installing those corner covers you will reduce producing cornered nests are making a bad decision.

Remember what I have been preaching about how to quickly populate your new BH?

"Give them what they like".

If they like those 90* corners, give it to them.

Put aside those requirements that your BH must not produce 90* corner shape nests.

Try to populate your BH to the max and after that you should slowly cover them up.

Do you know what is the best corner covers you should used?

Stainless steel plates.

Coming back to Tanjung Karang BH, my specific instruction to my two workers was to remove those corner covers facing the birds flying path off.

Those that are not facing the flying path will be spared.

Just wanted to please the BH owner since he paid at least RM 1.30 a piece.

Once the 90* corner woods are removed, the corners will be cleaned and if time permit they will be installed with those fake nests.

I am not sure how many will be installed but I will try to provide additional help to those young couples.

Fake nests installed at those 90* corners are their favorite spots.

It will be better when an internal sound tweeter is closed to it.

Try this idea and I can safely assured that you will see a sudden jump in your nests count soon.

Will post to you some pictures when the removal is carried out.

Call me at 017 7551318 if you have any doubt.

Tanjung Karang Revamp: The number of birds entering now shot up to 430.

(Look at the hexagonal, power and pole tweeters)

Just wanted to share some very interesting progress on the Tanjung Karang BH revamp operation.

The first day the estimated number that entered the BH from about 7:00 pm till 7:45 pm was about 300 birds.

However the second day the number shot up to 430 birds for the same duration.

The only difference between the first and the second was the additional tweeters installed around the monkey house and the veranda.

The BH owner was happy to watch those birds entering his BH.

I think the target I set might be a bit too low.

If I choose a 100% increase it will be about 87 new nests.

Now I am looking at about 430 divide by 2  equals 215 minus 87 nests equal to 128.

This looks like getting a 147% up.

I think it is possible.

The good news was that the BH was below the birds flying path home.

Every 4 months there will be a brand new sets of young birds and they are waiting to be tapped.

My next mission now is to do the needful in order all those new birds who entered will stay and be  new tenants.

The following things will be implemented on all the three floors:

1) The entrance hole facing the roof water pond will be reduced to about 3 feet wide to reduce the amount of light and at the same time assist those birds to have a better flying angle into the hall.

2) The connecting door between the hall and the nesting room will also be reduced from current 7 feet to 4 feet wide. Main objective is to force those new birds to fly above the LAL.  It will also reduce the amount of light entering the nesting room areas.

3) The wall at the roving areas will be painted black to reduce the amount of light reflecting into the nesting room areas.

4) The connecting doors at all the nesting rooms will be reduced to minimize light pollution.

5) The excess partitions walls inside the nesting rooms will be dismantled which will improve the room size.

6) All nesting corners that were facing the flying path will be removed.  The removal will increase the number of 90* corners.  This is where those young couples love to start their first nest.

7) The internal tweeters arrangement will be from single to clusters.  These clusters will be carry out on double or triple crossings jump.

8) There will be a lot of fake nests both the rectangular and triangular in shape.

9) All the installed fake nests will be applied with Super Pheromone.

10) I plan to apply the super pheromone liquid on some of the nesting planks.

With all these special arrangements those young couples will have a very tough decision not to stay in this BH.

What more when the external sounds are so melodious and lovely to hear.

Let see what happen after 6 months.

Call me if you owned a BH and now doing well.  0177551318

EBNIC Full Brochure Invitation !!!

For those who have been asking about the Seminar schedule on November 25th-26th 2014:

How Many BHs are There Around Tanjung Karang BH ?

(The green colored monkey house unit above a BH with on and off  external sound)

On the very first day that I landed at Tanjung Karang BH I saw at least three BHs along the same access road.

The nearest was about 80 meters away.

I walked along the road to check how many BHs were there and found that there were 4 BHs on the same stretch of road.

All the four were three stories high and about 30' X 80' in size.

They became like an eco park to me.

My workers while installing those hexagonal tweeters did some audit and when he came down he said that he can count at least 9 units all over the place.

While taking a good rest I met the owner's father.

I asked him how many BHs are there in the vicinity.

His bold answer was at least 100 units excluding at Sekinchan area which was very closed by which has almost 400 units.

You can imagine how competitive it is to draw those birds into one BH.

You need to compete and if you do little or nothing you will surely fail.

I took some pictures of all the four BHs competing with this BH which I was engaged to revamp.

Just imagine how are they going to increase the nests inside.

(the oldest among the 5 BHs along the same road)

(The seems to be the largest among the five with two entrance holes)

(This seems to be the loudest in its sound but soon the revamp unit will take over)

Tanjung Karang BH Revamp Operation !!!

After a short break my workers are currently at the Tanjung Karang BH.

The first thing I instructed them to do were the followings:

1) Install two hexagonal tweeters on the monkey house roof.

2) Drain the water inside three ponds for some cleaning up.

3) Check on the total number of nests inside the BH.

The first instruction was done and the two went up within a very short time.

One was at the side and one facing the main pond.

The side unit was about 6 feet above the roof floor while the second hexagonal tweeter was about 2 feet above.

My main intention was to see the birds reaction in the evening.

I stayed back to inspect the reaction and I can safely say that the number of birds peak to something like 300.

I also discovered that the BH is below their flying path.

We were lucky since the owner already installed a camera to view the main entrance door.

This first day observation seem to incline
towards a better chance of success to double the nests population within the next few months.

The number of nests found in the BH after about 4 years of operation stands at 87 pieces.

Most of the nests were at the middle floor, the second highest was on the top most floor.

My best advise to the owner was that his BH will be able to double its nests to 174 within 4-6 months.

He took four years to get 87 nests and after my revamp operation I will double it for him within 4-6 months.

The three water ponds on the roof areas and the monkey house veranda type were filled with those water rust.

My workers drained its water out and they planned to remove at least 2-3 tons of those rust.

This was not in my scope of work.

Anyway it seems to be something normal that we do for this type of BHs.

Today will be the second day of my revamp operation and you are welcome to come and learn about how to reactivate a BH whose nests numbers stop to increase.

Remember our mission is to reactive it and multiple the nests number to 100% increase within 4-6 months.

If you wanted to learn more about it just call me at 017 7551318.

Make sure you come in a working attire.

I will allocate you to carry out some job and along the way you will learn some interesting techniques.

Who knows after this first experiences you will soon become a good consultant better than me.

The Swiftlet Farming Seminar !!!

(Very little saliva but the fake nest help to hold the two eggs)

The Seminar went well but the number of attendance were not as good as during the good old days.

Managed to get 5 responds and all were pleased with my talk.

Two came from Vietnam, one Singapore and two locals.

Today I will be taking two to visit BHs located at Kuala Selangor.

One of my new topic covered during the Seminar was about the use of Fake nests to lure those wild birds.

I explained to them about what is so special about fake nests and why those new couples that entered our BH are attracted to use these special gadget.

Main reason, I told them, is because these young couples have very little experience in building a nest and it will be hard for them to produce those saliva.

The fake nest will help them in many ways but the most crucial is that the amount of saliva needed to complete their nests is very little.

When the male partner finish his nests with very little saliva and done with within a very short period of time, he will soon be given the green light to start the love making.

This is what these young birds are up too.

Very little work but they got their first sexual copulation soon after.

The deployment of fake nests in your BH can be in two stages.

One is to carry out in a period of time.

Say you install about 200 fake nests inside your VIP rooms.

200 is not that many but good enough at a starter.

You need to use those Phillip head screws and install those fake nest as closed as possible to the internals sound playing tweeters.

This will increase a very high chance of being located by those young birds when then visit your BH.

Once install you need to spray the Super Pheromone spray 2 times.

One spray on the fake nest body and the second spray on the nesting plank just above the fake nest installed.

You can then wait for a couple of weeks to check their effectiveness.

During your subsequent visit you will still need to carry out the follow up job.

This time around you adopt my Nest Kick Start (NKS) strategies.

Wall inside your BH and try to trace for any fresh bird shit spots on the nesting room floor.

The moment you see any one of them check if you have already install a fake nest just above it.

If there was none quickly get a ladder and install these fake nests.

Carry out this job diligently and I assure you that your BH birds population will serge much faster compared to you neighbors.

Please feel free to call me for any clarification.

Call this no 017 7551318 or write to harryswiftlet@yahoo.com

EBNIC Confrence: November 25-26th, 2014 !!!

Next month you should find some time to attend to this annual affair : Edible Bird Nest Industry Conference.

Scheduled to be held at The Marriot Putrajaya on November 25 and 26th 2014.

This conference will be held in conjunction with Malaysian Agriculture, Horticulture and Agrotourism (MAHA International) 2014

There will be a huge turn out for MAHA and it will be nice to have EBNIC alongside the function.

I was given a picture of the program and was also invited to participate during the conference.

My main talk topic will cover probably the right strategies to quickly populate your BH.

It is still in a preliminary stage and hopefully an official invitation is given.

Once confirmed I will sit down and prepare the necessary papers to be used during my talk.

I am very glad that I was given the opportunity to put forward my techniques and you might not want to miss this golden opportunity.

I was also informed that there are a number of well known scientists from the neighboring countries and Malaysia giving their papers.

If you are a serious swiftlet rancher try not to miss attending the conference.

Call me if you have any queries about the conference.

I can be contacted at 017 7551318.

Tanjung Karang BH : Frankly Speaking !!

The revamp operation on this new BH was delayed due to some problem with my workers.

The elder worker fell sick and I could not do much but wait until he is well.

While waiting for his heath to be OK I gathered some BH items and delivered to Tanjung Karang.

During the delivery I took a closer look at the BH and tried a number of my good sounds.

Based on the inspection I have the following to be very concerned:

1) The BH is too closed to those Oil palm trees.  

Many of the tree trunks were touching the BH walls.
A few that were at the main entrance hole seems to be getting too tall and will block the entrance hole within the next couple of months.
If the BH owner do nothing to remove these trees the entrance hole will be difficult to find and soon the hole will be blocked from the birds.
A few of those palm trees need to be sacrified.

2) There was very little response from those birds.

I tried a number of my good external sounds.
The number of birds that responded to these sounds were very little.
A very challenging situation when no birds wanted to response to my good sounds.
My only hope is that when my hexagonal and bazooka tweeters are installed they will respond.
At the moment I am keeping my finger crossed.

3) The external sound stop at the main entrance doors.

No wonder why the nests are not multiplying.
The consultant stop the sound at the entrance areas only and there was no external sound inside the nesting rooms and along the staircase to pull those wild birds.
This can be easily upgraded during the revamp operation.

4) This BH wetting system uses those water timer gadget.

The wetting system does not use any kind of mist maker but only a normal pipe hung along the walls and connected to the water supply pipe using the timer.
I think most of these timers were dead.  Their batteries were dead I guess.
I told the owner that his method was not suitable for the BH.
My recommendation was to upgrade using those chicken coop humidifiers controlled by a humidistat.
Each floor will requires at least three humidifiers.

5) His BH nesting rooms ceiling were all above 10 feet.

This is not what I like to carry out my work.
The installation of corner covers, tweeters and fake nests are crucial during maintenance.
If my workers are not careful they might be falling down the working table or ladder.
Could not do much on this issue but have to endure the hard ship.
I just lost 5 kilograms after climbing those stairs and ladders at Segamat BH.
Also have a bout of diarrhea for three days.
I have got to put up to this hard work all the time.

6) There is a big pond on the BH rooftop.

Main problem is with the water rust that float on the water surface.
I remembered cleaning the same in Sungai Rambai BH.
After a few months they will start to grow again.
There must be some chemicals to stop them from growing.

7) The BH seems to have quite a number of partitions and too many rooms.

There is nothing wrong to have those rooms but too many might not serve the purpose.
I believed one to two rooms will be good enough.
I therefore will remove a number of those unnecessary partitions and reduce the number of rooms on each floor.

8) The doors into these rooms were just too big.

My recommendation to the BH owner is to reduce all of them to something like 3 feet wide and not more that 4 feet for the lowest floor.
The whole idea is to reduce the light that pollute the nesting rooms.
The door frame have to be installed with two external sound tweeters on each side.

9) There were at least 5 more BHs about 200 meters away from this BH.

One very bad thing about this BH is its close proximity to a number of BHs.
Nearly all seems to have very little birds,
I counted and there were at least five which I can see and count.
All were at least 3 stories and 25 feet by 80 feet.
It was more like at a Swiftlet Eco Park.


Frankly this BH will be tougher to handle as compared to the one in Segamat, Johor.

I can only try my best to put all my knowledge and experiences to populate the BH.

If I can get 50% increase within the next 4-6 months I will be extremely happy.

Who knows I might get 100% up, (God please help me).

What ever the outcome I shall try to do my best for this BH.

There will be a few new things to install and I think if I can improve the internal system those birds will choose this BH as their favourite destination.

Sirim Is Preparing Malaysian Swiftlet Raw Nests Malaysian Standard !!!

A very interesting happening today September 30th 2014.

A group discussion was held at Sirim office to discuss about the Sirim Standard for Malaysian Raw Nests.

I was told that about 30 delegates representing a number of swiftlet farming association from all the states in Malaysia attended the meeting today.

No details was obtained but their discussion was about the said standard.

What worry me most is how can we human set a standard on something which the birds who are responsible in building the nests.

What they consumed will in some way effect the saliva quality.

The amount of feathers which they plugged on their bodies and lay on their nests cannot be dictated by us.

Maybe the color and the nitrite might be within human control.

However if we human wanted to set our standard on them we must first know how to talk to these wild birds.

Maybe someone like Dr Ed can do so.

According to my source the discussion was still in a preliminary stage but on the long run these standards will be thrown to all swiftlet ranchers.

Maybe SIRIM should get directly involved in explaining to all swiftlet ranchers on what are these standards for and how swiftlet ranchers can meet the standard.

There must be logical method that are proven to achieve the required standard.

Anyway why do the standard came into the picture right now?

Are the Chinese from mainland China wanted raw nests to be exported to them?

If the export will help to improve the raw nest value we should support these moves.