A Room Below A Wooden House With Lots Of Serinti !!!

I was very excited to be invited to view a colony of Serinti birds that occupied a section of lower floor of a wooden house.

The person who invited me to evaluate the nests is an old friend who owned a new BH closed to this particular Serinti colony.

"Pak Harry, can you evaluate these two nests and advise me your views?"

This was his exact words when he dropped by my Subang 2 warehouse about a week ago.

"Brother, this two are Serinti's nests and they are not as valuable as compared to swiftlet nests. The amount of saliva is too little (less than 20%) to extract and not feasible to make a honest living."  was my answer.

"What can we do with them if there are more than 500 nests in one location?", he posted this interesting question.

"Well if you are dead serious we can consider doing some kind of cross fostering but let me have a good look at the location first."  my reply to him.

Today I was at the said location and I was pretty excited to be given the opportunity to view the colony.

The strange thing was that these Serinti colony were occupying a wooden house that was elevated above the ground by about 5 feet.

You need to squat down to reach the part that there were occupying and if you are not careful you will hit those floor beams.

I give no time to craw, if I needed to, just to evaluate the situation.

After looking at the nests, mostly empty, and its surrounding I told the newbie to consider taking over the area as a cross fostering research centre.

There were about 300-400 nests that occupied the a part of the wooden house.

My idea were as follows:

1) Rent the whole floor at a small fee for cross fostering purposes.

2) Shut the area with suitable walls made of bricks and cement boards to block the lights.  One small room shall be for the swiftlet and the rest shall be for the Serinti.

3) Consider to hatch swiftlet eggs using an incubator.

4) Once they hatched switch those eggs with swiftlet babies.

5) Each nest can be a breeding cot for two young babies.  If all the 500 nests can successfully crossed fostered with swiftlet, we can generate a total of 1000 swiftlet babies.

6) Out of these 1000 young babies (40-43 days old) the breeder can transfer them to his BH nearby.  This can be a good source to populate his own BH using babies cross fostered by those Serinti birds.

7) I was also keen to apply the translocation method for my Bukit Pelandok BH, I told him.

8) We can even help others who would like the try the translocation technique.  They can book say 50 birds a cycle.

9) We can also use this as the training ground for those who wanted to learn the technique to carry out cross fostering project as long as they have a suitable Serinti colony house closed to their BH(s).

Those who would like to learn more please call 017 755 1318 perhaps by early 2012.

Tentatively the wooden house will be tenanted by next week and the renovation works shall be done within two weeks from today.

There will be a small fee for you to learn this special method of how to cross foster those swiftlet using Serinti birds.

If you have the will there are always some ways.

An Innovative Cross Fostering Project In Selangor !!!

I was very excited to be invited to view a colony of Serinti birds that occupied a section of lower floor of a wooden house.

The person who invited me to evaluate the nests is an old friend who owned a new BH closed to this particular Serinti colony.

"Pak Harry, can you evaluate these two nests and advise me your views?"

This was his exact words when he dropped by my Subang 2 warehouse about a week ago.

"Brother, this two are Serinti's nests and they are not as valuable as compared to swiftlet nests. The amount of saliva is too little (less than 20%) to extract and not feasible to make a honest living."  was my answer.

"What can we do with them if there are more than 300 nests in one location?", he posted this interesting question.

"Well if you are dead serious we can consider doing some kind of cross fostering but let me have a good look at the location first."  my reply to him.

Today I was at the said location and I was pretty excited to be given the opportunity to view the colony.

The strange thing was that these Serinti colony were occupying a wooden house that was elevated above the ground by about 5 feet.

You need to squat down to reach the part that there were occupying and if you are not careful you will hit those floor beams.

I give no time to craw, if I needed to, just to evaluate the situation.

After looking at the nests, mostly empty, and its surrounding I told the newbie to consider taking over the area as a cross fostering research centre.

There were about 200-300 nests that occupied the a part of the wooden house.

My idea were as follows:

1) Rent the whole floor at a small fee for cross fostering purposes.

2) Shut the area with suitable walls made of bricks and cement boards to block the lights.  One small room shall be for the swiftlet and the rest shall be for the Serinti.

3) Consider to hatch swiftlet eggs using an incubator.

4) Once they hatched switch those eggs with swiftlet babies.

5) Each nest can be a breeding cot for two young babies.  If all the 300 nests can successfully crossed fostered with swiftlet, we can generate a total of 600 swiftlet babies.

6) Out of these 600 young babies (40-43 days old) the breeder can transfer them to his BH nearby.  This can be a good source to populate his own BH using babies cross fostered by those Serinti birds.

7) I was also keen to apply the translocation method for my Bukit Pelandok BH, I told him.

8) We can even help others who would like the try the translocation technique.  They can book say 50 birds a cycle.

9) We can also use this as the training ground for those who wanted to learn the technique to carry out cross fostering project as long as they have a suitable Serinti colony house closed to their BH(s).

Those who would like to learn more please call 017 755 1318 perhaps by early 2012.

Tentatively the wooden house will be tenanted by next week and the renovation works shall be done within two weeks from today.

There will be a small fee for you to learn this special method of how to cross foster those swiftlet using Serinti birds.

Pictures OF Serinti Birds Taken When I Was In Brunei Darulsalam !!!

A newbie from Tenom, Sabah wanted me to republish the pictures of Serinti birds that have very similar characteristics of AF. The only thing is that they build their nests using grass twigs plus their saliva.

If you want to see them much clearer double click on all the pictures posted on this page.

You can keep these pictures for your reference and please use them for your information purposes.

The Serinti, if you are a positive thinker, can help you to increase the number of AF in your area. The idea is to use them as the foster parents of AF babies.

You can either replace their eggs with AF eggs or with AF babies that you incubate using an incubator.

Once the young AF take their flight they will never behave the same as those Serinti. So if you can cross foster say 500 birds a seasons, you can easily have at least 10 to 20% into your BH (subject to your BH design and smell).

Remember Serinti have no echolocation ability while AF do have. As such Serinti will not be able to fly in the dark house. So they will not colonise your BH, may be the outside roof. So if you are smart you built some areas for those Serinti to occupy the external part of your BH (for you to carry out cross fostering) while the internal is for those saliva nests producers (your white gold).

For more details you may want to read these articles that I wrote sometime ago.

http://swiftletfarming.blogspot.com/2008/02/cross-fostering-of-grass-swiftlets-with.html

http://swiftletfarming.blogspot.com/2008/09/met-someone-who-is-active-in-cross.html

If you need any AF eggs please let me know. I need at least one months to find them.

I might be able to arrange for your cross fostering activities. Call me for help at 017 7551318

All the above pictures were taken at a Car Park in an apartment in Brunei.

Met Someone Who Is Active In Cross Fostering !!!

Hope all my blog readers read one of my old article about "cross fostering".

Cross fostering refers to using those Serinti birds to adopt AF chicks or eggs.

In many parts of Malaysia and Indonesia, you may find lots of Serinti birds. (Serinti is very similar to AF but they built their nest from casurina tree leaves or fern from tree barks plus 20% saliva). They eat the same food and have rather similar breeding pattern like AF.

The term cross fostering is actually defined as you remove those eggs or young chicks from these Serinti nests and replace them with AF eggs or babies. Need to do them when the birds are away and make sure the item placed are not with human smell.

Today I came across a person from Sabah, Malaysia who is pretty successful in doing this technique.

He started the Serinti farming by accident and after 7 years his house now have a total of 4,000 nests.

He started the cross fostering sometime back and stop about 2 years ago. After looking at the number of birds growing and his neighbors harvesting them he feel that the time have come to do this in a more serious manner.

He intent to install sound system, enclose those areas slowly and perhaps improve the temperature and humidity by stages.

The most effective method of cross fostering, according to him, is to go for chick replacement.

Import those eggs and incubate them. Once they are hatch, swap these babies with Serinti babies. Mark the nests that were replaced.

I am very happy to have met him and I am sure one day I might be able to stop by in Sabah and visit his unique BH.

Want to join my trip?

Call Harry at 017 755 1318