Tumpat BH: Need To Ask The Owner To Do The Right Things !!!

Last week I felt honored when this BH owner request my presence at his Tumpat BH.

He like many other BH owner was in a kind of pondering to continue with it or shut it off.

Well it is easy to give up and shut the BH off however he claimed that every month his payment to the Bank continues.

So he cannot just shut it off while the Bank payment continues.

His only choice is to run it but he need to revive it as quickly as possible.

What this BH need to produce is about 2-3 kg a month, and his bank payment is done.

I calculated how many nests his BH can have.

If you multiply the length and breath and by 4, he should get the rough number.

His BH length is 100 feet and width is 40 feet.  Remember this BH is 3 stories high.

So the total number of nests (estimated) if fully occupied is 100X40X3X3 = 48,000 nests.

Total kilogram is 400. (divide 48,000 by 120 nests per kilogram)

To pay the bank he needs only 2-3 Kg a month.

It looks like not a very big deal but after 5 years plus the nests number remain stuck at 60.

My personal opinion are as follows:

1) He should have erect just a small unit.  Two stories with about 20 feet wide by 60 feet long is more than adequate.  This good size will cost less than half of what he have spend.  The balance he can erect one more at another location.

2) The best way to cut his revamp cost is to concentrate on one floor.  Shut the two floors and focus on one.  In this case focus on the top floor.  Once the total number of nest is 1000-1500 he can start to revamp the other floors.

3) His lower floors is currently occupied with a number of bats.  A number of those nesting planks fell onto the floor.  For safety reason he should do a check on all those nesting planks and remove those that are loose so that they will not fall on any one who entered the floor.

4) He should shut the flying path passage to the ground floor in stages.  Allow those baby birds to fly out.  Once all are out he have to completely shut the LAL.  This will force those that stays at the ground floor to relocate their nests to the upper floors.

5) Overall the BH looks okay from the outside and inside.  However I saw some common issues that were neglected by most consultants.  The main entrance hole is facing the South and not the East.

6) The makeshift hexagonal tweeters is not properly located and not functioning.

7) The entrance area need some kind of more tweeters to make it more attractive to those wild birds.

8) The LMB was with only two external sound tweeters.

9) The nesting rooms (all the 3 floors) were wide opened and too bright.

10) Not surprising when the internal sound tweeters were not properly installed.


These are some issues that need some kind of his attention.

I hope I will be able to guide him on how to make sure his target of 2-3 kg a month is achieved.

Call me if you have your own BH with something similar problems.  My number is 017 7551318

This BH Can Get More Nests If The Owner Follow My Recommendations !!!

(This BH is too BARE)

After my recent inspection I set down with the BH owner and told him what his BH is lacking.

1) He need to improve his knowledge about swiftlet farming.  He cannot depend too much on luck.  He was very lucky to have stumbled onto me and my blog.  He was also lucky that I came to Machang, Kelantan.

2) His sound collection is almost none.  Never thought about starting a sound collection.  Both his current internal and external were the same from the day when his BH starts its operation.  I encouraged him to collect at least 5-6 good external sounds and 3-4 good internal sounds.

3) I encouraged him to choose a target so that he can gauge his BH performances.  Currently his BH has about 250 nests.  He should target about 500 nests within the next 12 months after revamping his BH.  Remember he already have 1000 birds staying.

4) I told him that once the 500 nests target is completed his BH will or should be on a auto cruise mode.  What I meant was that he will no longer need to focus on getting young birds from his neighbors BHs anymore.  All he need to do from then on is to focus on how to induce those young birds that were raised inside his BH to return.

5) One area of concern was his harvesting technique.  He showed me the frequencies that he conducted nests harvesting and how many he plucked every time.  I told him that he need to reduce the frequencies to allow healthier growth.  He should not continue the old method but follow my recommendations.

6) He lack ideas on how to improve his BH nests quality.  Every harvest that he conducted the odd shape nests (90* and 135*) were way to high (above 70%).  He have no idea on how to improve his BH nest quality.  Nil and never crossed his mind on it.

7) I explained to him that if he continue with his current harvesting method, his nests quality will be very low and his income will be affected.  I proposed to him to set a target.  Right now the odd shape is 70% and above, but his target is to push it to about 15-20%.  Frankly speaking he was dumbfounded when I told him about this idea.  He was clueless and think that I was crazy.

8) I sat down to explain point by point how to improve his nests quality using either those plates and/or plastic chains.

9) I draw his attention on how poor is his monkey house area.  The number of external sound tweeters were too little.  He only installed two mini bazookas and one horn tweeters.  Where is your hexagonal tweeter?  What is that Pak Harry?

10) My recommendations on how to improve his external sound system were laid down one by one and I guaranteed that if he follow what was laid 100 he will see more birds above his monkey house roof.

11) I tackled his nesting rooms brightly problem with ease.  Told him to erect a few walls with a properly sized doors.  Each door to be installed with the right number of external sound tweeters.  Again he was amazed with my very simple solution.

There were a few more items that I told him but I think it will be too much for you all to chew.

If you think your BH is in a kind of problems, please call me at 017 7551318.

My frank intention is to help you with your BH problem.

Just talk to me and let me explain how I can be of help.

Have a good day and thanks God for every morning that you open your eyes.

A BH With More Then 1000 Birds However With Only 250 Nests !!!

How can it be?

During my first meeting with this BH owner I was informed about the problem.

What I did was to provide my prediction.

"I think your BH is too bright.  What I meant is that the nesting room is too bright"  I told him.

The moment I mentioned the brightness issue he seems to nod his head which indicate that he agrees with my prediction.

He quickly invite me to take a good look and explain how to minimize those bright light.

Well that was not all.

He seems to face the nests distribution problems too.

Most of the 250 nests were on the top floor while the middle floor was with about 30 nests while the ground floor was nearly empty.

Usually when most of your nests are on the top most floor, they can be due to a few reasons.

1) Your main entrance hole faces west.  Those birds choose to nest nearer to the entrance hole areas.  Main reason being they need the morning light to guide them out of the BH as early as possible.  Staying downstairs or too far from the main entrance hole will cause them to go out late.  When this happened they will be starving and worst is not to collect enough food for their siblings.

2) One more possible reason is they don't know how to fly downstairs.  If your BH Lubang Antara Lantai (LAL) are wrongly located these birds will surely have a hard time to find it.

3) In addition to the no 2) if your location is proper (the highest traffic) they will not go down if there are not enough external sound tweeters installed to pull those new birds downwards.


Well the moment I entered I was dead right.

All the three predictions were on the "Dot".

I could not say anymore since they were all right.

I wrote a long report for him to study and perhaps revamp his BH to all my recommendations.

He was very grateful and promised to carry out those recommendations in stages.

Since his BH was not very far for the Machang BH, I might allocate some of my time to drop by at his BH during my next visiti.

Lukut BH: Finally The Two Owners Decided To Go Ahead With The Proposed Revamp Operation !!!

The Lukut BH owners called me to meet them this evening August 19th 2015.

I was away in Sungai Patani and decided to accept their invitation.

We met in Bangsar and discussed on a few important things.

I tried to convince on of the owner since the other have not objection in going ahead.

My ideas for him to consider are as follows:

1) His BH right now is facing a nest stagnant syndrome.  This have something to do with the BH condition especially internal fixtures and darkness.

2) If both of them stay put with the BH there is a very slim chance of increasing its nests.

3) What they need to do is to revamp their BH and follow all those recommendations which I have made in my visit report.

4) If they know how to do themselves they should proceed with all the recommendations and I am sure there will some nests improvement.

5) However if they cannot get the right people to revamp I offered my services.

6) They key now is to push the total nest up to 300 nests (at least).  What I was steering at was to get their BH in a auto cruise mode.  Yes at 300 nests they will have a total of 300X2X3 = 1800 young birds to populate their BH every 12 months.

7) Right now they only have about 100 nests and they only need 200 nest more.

8) I can promise about 100 more after the revamp (within 10 months).

9) If they look after their BH properly with no disturbances from predators and burglars they might get the 300 nests within 1.5 years after the revamp operation.


I gave them the assurance that there are at least 16 approved processing centers that are willing to buy their nests.

If they are smart and wanted to expand their business further they can perhaps help to take over other BHs that are in trouble and need some help.

I am willing to help them to expand their swiftlet business once the Lukut BH is proven to be successful.

After the short meeting both decided to go ahead and wanted me to move my workers in early September 2015.

It will be good for them to take their investment to the next level.

I told them that they were very lucky to have stumbled onto Pak Harry.

Machang BH: Owner Wanted My Workers To Move Over Soonest !!!

Finally after two days reviewing my proposal, the Machang BH owner called to confirm.

"Please assemble the things required and move up there as soon as you can."

I was not surprised but he gave me very time to breath.

He was very serious about it and within a few minutes he transferred the amount of deposit I requested.

This will be a very long journey and I hope I can get all my things up soonest.

I wrote to him about what I think were wrong with his BH.

I took about two days to complete the visit report.

What I have in mind is to open a new entrance hole at one of the BH wall facing east.

The old entrance hole need some modification and I am sure my worker will know what I desire.

The long range bazooka (spoil) will be taken down and serviced.

I have not decided where this old gadget will go.

What this BH needed a two sets of hexagonal tweeters and a lot of external and internal sound tweeters.

The new entrance hole will be for the top floor nests population why the old entrance hole will be for both floors.

Once those birds entered the BH they will be guided to the right location.

I will create a number of VIP rooms to make them feel comfortable.

I am sure within a few short months the nest numbers will double or maybe much higher.

Double is no more very challenging.

I prefer something like triple or quadruple within less than 10 months.

Let us hope that this will come true.

Call me at 017 7551318 if you wish to join the revamp operation.

Something That I Learned From A Forestry Officer From Sabah !!!

While attending a workshop organized by Jabatan Veterinar at Fleminggo hotel I set beside an old friend who happened to be from Sabah.

I met him a couple of times in Sabah during a couple of Swiftlet Seminars organized by some friends.

We have some good exchange of latest developments in swiftlet farming and he showed me his latest BH video clip.

This was what happened next.

"Harry if not because of my release of young birds inside this BH it was totally not working." he explained.

What do you meant by that?  I asked him.

Well what he did was to release a number of young birds (about 100) for about three times at night.

He collected these young birds that were about to fly out for the first time and transfer them into his BH on the ground floor.

On the next morning many of these young birds will start taking their first flight off.

They will fly out by following the morning light and will usually return to the same house in the evening (according to him).

There will be some that will need some additional time.

Those that do not fly away you need to feed them about 2-3 times a day.

Once they take their first flight out there is no need to feed them.

Usually they will no longer eat on the last two days before they fly.

After conducting the "Translocation" his BH started to change its fate.

They started to return and at the same time bring home their friends or partners.

Many others wild birds that flew closed to his BH will start to come in to join the fun.

I look at this new and interesting idea as a kind of a very good  method to perhaps help those BHs that are empty or with not so many birds population.

If we can follow this simple idea we can perhaps help to populate our BH.

I therefore would like those who experience some problem in populating your BH to adopt this simple technique.

I am sure it will be hard in the beginning but soon after you mastered the proper technique you will be able to populate you slow moving or empty BH.

Best of luck to all.

Call me if you have any question on how to start this idea,

My contact number is 017 7551318.

Merdeka Jaya BH: How To Reconfigure the Top Most Floor !!!

Been looking at the Medeka Jaya BH floor configuration and I am very sure that the current configuration is wrong.

My conclusion about the current configuration is that those birds need to make too many turns to reach the back room.

This is something that these birds don't like.

If they don't like something we need to correct and modify it so that they will like it.

The best is to reduce the too many twists and turns.

My propose idea will look something like this.

The new configuration will be anchored on the top entry area, the LAL hole and the back room.

My idea is to shut the window and perhaps open a door at a new location.

The moment they enter this door number one they will be forced to fly above the LAL and make only 90 degrees turn towards the second door.

Once they entered the 2nd door they can fly straight into the back room.

No more twists and turns like before.

I am sure this new configuration will help them to fly straight into the VIP room and make their nests there.

Right now they are stuck at the staircase areas.

Have a look at the two lay out and perhaps you will agree with my new plan.

(Current layout is too taxing for those birds to locate the back room)

(My idea of moving them into the VIP room no 1)

BH Visit: Somewhere in Melaka !!!

(A row of shop houses converted into swiftlet farm)

After my first visit at this person BH in Lukut he now wanted me to take a good look at his 2nd BH located somewhere in Taman Merdeka Raya Melaka.

I took about 1 hour and 20 minutes to find the place from Kuala Lumpur.

Well as usual I took about 45 minutes to track on what can be wrong with his 2nd BH.

His main complain was that the nests number stop increasing after hitting about 80 nests or so.

I remember his words on how he bought this BH from is brother in law.

He thought it was a straight forward and simple to reactivate the BH.

He never knew that there were more to it.

Beside the sudden drop in the number of birds in his area, his BH seems to face many other problems that he was not able to understand.

I managed to list the following:

1) There was not a single nest at the back of the nesting room.

I told him that the main reason why there was not have something to do with the way those partition walls were erected.

The current walls are not helping those wild birds to find their way into the last nesting room.

 The moment they entered the window they need to twist and turn to reach the targeted location and I don't think they like the idea.

A very common mistake but most BH owners have no idea why.

2) The main entrance window located at the top entry area was wrongly located.

I told him that if you care to look carefully the moment those wild birds enter the window they are facing the opposite direction where the first door is located.

You are asking them to make a 180 degrees turn to enter you nesting room.

This is not a good way to welcome them.  He should make life a bit easier for his tenants.

3) Something tells me that his LAL is not well completed.

If you want more birds to fly down to the ground floor you need to draw them down, I told him.

The current method is not well done and the chance to attract new couples to come downstairs
 is slim.

 Main reason being the LAL areas were not adequately fix with external sound tweeters.

During my inspection there was only one miserable tweeter that was functioning around the LAL mouth.  How do you expect them to find their way down?

4) I Was not impressed with the number of tweeters at the top entry areas.

He should realized that his BH was in a vicinity of so many other BHs.

They compete with him.

If he wanted to lure more birds above his top entry area is to pull them over with more tweeters.

He should make sure the hexagonal tweeter are properly fixed, the water proof tweeters on the top entry mouth are well installed and perhaps a few workable medium range bazookas.

One pointing to the nearest BH with the most number of birds returning home and the other perhaps towards their flying back path.

5) All his internal sound tweeters need some kind of reorientation or perhaps replacement.

Many of us do not realized how important are those internal sound tweeters.

For a new or lowly populated BH you need to depend on these gadgets.

They are your main attraction to those birds that entered and stay at your BH during the night.

They will usually cling to this tweeters and the sound that you played will make them feel safe.

 After a number of nights they will start laying their territorial marking preventing others from taking over.

If you are lucky they will soon erect their first nest.

So you will realized that this internal sound tweeter is in a way help those birds to start their first nest.

What I am trying to make you realize is that this gadget must be properly installed facing the right direction.

Try not to suka suka install them without any idea how they will help you with your tenants.

Very few tweeters and are not precisely installed.

6) He did installed a number of fake nests in one of the room however Not very impressive ???

I mentioned to him about the important of fake nests in new BHs or BHs with little nests.

He tried to install however I was not very happy on how they were installed.

When we install those fake nests we must know its reasons and where the precise location should be.

The should not be too big and not too small.

These were just a few things that I can write but as usual there are more to report.

Macang BH: The Morning Before I Left Macang BH !!!

Please enjoy watching this video clip.

I took it in the morning on August 6th 2014 just before I started my journey back to Kuala Lumpur.

The owner and all his brothers and parent were delighted with what they say.

"It has been a very long time since the same thing happened Harry."

So nice to watch them and the BH is back alive"  he said.

During my two days stay I spent some time to test all my effective sounds and after testing nearly 20 sounds only four seems to perform well.

I listed the sounds as follows:

Super TGI,
Super Vaccum,
Marvelous Cloud and
D Honey.

What I did was to leave one of the sound with them and let them enjoy the new activities.

I know that those birds will come but there is no guarantee that they will enter and stays.

The house is not ready I told the owner.

The only way out for him now is to upgrade it and let me confirm when it was done to my specification or recommendations.

I am now preparing a long visit report for him to follow.

If you owned a BH and have a similar problem please call 017 7551318

A Short Visit To This Failed BH Somewhere In Kelantan !!!

The journey was about 5 hours and the owner allowed me to stay at a Homestay house just beside his failed BH.

He was a kind heart man who wanted to give back his success to his beloved family.

All he wanted in his life is to get his BH produce about 3-5 kg a month and all will be used to finance his family (mute brothers, father and mother).

However after almost 4 years there were only 19 nests.

The number of nests never grew for almost 2 years.

He did tried flying in a "Kial" (a witch master) from Indonesia to eradicate what ever evil spirit inside.  The Kial came in and stayed for a few days.  Prayed inside and left some talisman items inside.

Nothing happened and finally he took those talisman item and sent it back to the Kial.

"Nothing happened Pak Kial.  So please take these talisman back" he told me what he did.

He never gave up.

He also followed closely a good friend who owned a BH.

His trick was to follow what this guy did in his BH.  His condition was, as long as he applied and works he will copy the method.

He knows that this method will take a very long time and he finally spoke to his friend about getting the right "consultant" to inspect his BH.

The same friend after meeting me a couple of time suggested that he should use my inspection services.

That was how I met him for the time time.

He disguise as a Pheromone buyer.

I sat down with him for a few minutes and told him that there is no guarantee that the Pheromone can help him unless his BH have a lot of visitors who come in every evening.

After digesting my suggestion he told me that he opt to get be to his BH.  He agreed with me that if there is no birds inside the Pheromone will not work.

He need to firstly draw those birds to his roof top and suck them in.

"How to do that Pak?" he asked.

By using those tweeters and proper sounds.  I told him.

The trip to his BH took me about 5 hours.  I am not sure if it was worth the effort.

My desire was to inspect what were wrong with his BH.

I have the following to compile:

1) His BH is considered to be well located between two to three towns (Macang, Pasir Merah and Kuala Krai) where there were a lot of BHs.

2) The only sad thing was that the number of birds that flew above his BH was only about 200-300 birds every day.  A bit too little however if we can attract them down to his BH he might stand some small chance.

3) The main entrance hole was a bid odd in its installation.  His so called consultant have very little knowledge about swiftlet preference and least about the morning sun.  The entrance hole was not directly facing the flying back path and was towards the north.

4) The main entrance hole design is not very friendly to the potential tenants.  The make shift entrance hole is just a small hut erected on the roof with no proper swiftlet sense.  Worth was the roof that was covered to extensively until you cannot find the hole if you are coming from the sides or the back.

5) There was no hexagonal tweeter above the main entrance hole structure however there was a no more functioning long range bazooka.  The owner claimed that it was him who installed and not the consultant.  This tells me something about the so called self made consultant.  He has no idea what he was trying to do.

6) Well when you enter the BH you will observed a number of weird things inside. The BH was square in shape about 40' X 40' and with no walls or proper partitioning.

7) It seems that all the ventilation pipes were made of those white colored PVC pipes.  The owner finally decided to paint them black.

8) The BH was wrongly wired using a kind of cheap wires that turned into dust after a few short months.  The owner have to redo the wiring himself.

9) There were about 75 internal sound tweeters and I told him that what he need is at least double of the current quanity

10) The way the tweeters were arranged were not seductive enough.  They were installed with very little objective to trap those wild birds.

11) One very disappointing observation were the way those nesting planks were installed.  No cross woods and not in the right running direction.  I pointed to the owner whey they were not proper.

12) The only partition erected was a very short wall (one straight wall about 10' )facing the LAL and the current entrance hole.  The light that entered the room was not taken seriously.

13) I pointed to him nearly 80% of all his current nests were located very closed to those internal sound tweeters.

14) The number of external sound tweeters inside the nesting room were 4,  Not adequate. I told him.

15) Every point of contact between the planks and the wall was covered with wood corners.  I explained why I feel that they should be removed.

16) I dont see any special gadget to trap these so call potential tenants.  Yes not a single fake nest.

17) There were a number of abandoned markings.  I explained to the owner on how important it is to force those new couples to adopt the BH by using my NKS ideas.

Well there are many more things to describe but please enjoy looking at these photos:

Kuala Kangsar BH Visit Report: Another Rip Off On A Clear Sunny Day !!!

(Those flying things are bats and not swiftlet)

Last on Sartuday July 25th 2015, visited this left to die BH located at Kuala Kangsar Perak.

Based on the BH owner description the BH was not completed and never hand over.

The so called "consultant" insist on the final payment and without that he refused to deliver the BH keys.

The owner on the other hand claimed that contractually the final payment can only be released once the BH has at least 3 functional nests.

It went on and on and nothing can be done until she decided to break the pad lock of her BH.

A very sad case where the unprofessional consultant wanted to take advantage of a little knowledge newbie.

The consultant not only cheated her money but the lawyer engaged for the so call sales transaction was not paid for his service too.

So what do you think happened when the BH located deep inside a Kampung not attended to?

You may want to know there were a lot of new unwanted tenants.

Lots of fruit bats staying now.

I estimated there were at least 20-30 bats staying up on the top floor and about 5 -10 on the lower floor.

Another deplorable things observed inside the BH were the followings:

1) There was not power supply connected.  The owner have to advance extra cash to engage a third party to get the line on.

2) There was not a single amplifier found inside the BH.

3) There was no Data room.  The rack to place those so called amplifiers were open to the ground floor nesting areas.  An irresponsible and unprofessional construction.

4) The nesting planks were installed about 4 feet apart.  May be this will cut his cost but looks horrible.

5) The consultant have no idea or no experience about swiftlet farming by looking at how those internal and external sound tweeters were installed.

6) The cables were loosely installed and not suitable for a good BH.

7) The entrance hole was ridiculous and not properly located.  It was facing the sky and without any hexagonal tweeters to attract those wild birds.

8) The number of ventilation holes was only about 4-5 per floor.  Ridiculously too little.


I was very disappointed and told the owner that there are a lot of works to be done.

It is more like the only usable thing are the walls and the roof.

The rest need a lot of work to be carried out.

I need to assemble a completely new sets of amplifiers, cables, tweeters and open a new entrance hole on the BH wall.

A new LAL have to be opened and those bats need to be captured and eliminated.

The ventilation holes need to be opened at least 30 per floor.

I am not sure how long it take to get all these items done.

I hope I can help to reactivate this terrible BH.

Enjoy some of these pictures taken: