Rats Attack: From Almost 70 Now only 2 Nests.

Today have a short meeting with the owner of a BH at Jenjarum Selangor..

He wanted me to deliver my latest two very effective sounds and I drove about 1 hour to meet him.

He was very disappointed with the attack by those rats.

Based on history this BH was not doing well however after meeting me he managed to push the nests number to 70 nests.

He left the BH unattended for a few months and suddenly found out that all his tenants were eaten away by rats.

A very typical problem with BH located at shop houses, I told him.

I faced a similar problem with one of my JV BH in Kuatan Pahang when those rats feeding on KFC rubbish started to move in into my JV bird house.

The attack and kill nearly all the poor tenants.

It will be a good advice to set traps or perhaps sprinckle some rats baits around the floor areas.

I have seen a guy who set those cage traps , 2 sets per floor, with biscuits as its bait.

This guy running a BH in Sedili said that every time he inspected his BH there will be a few with those rascals.

My advice to those with BH please try not to forget about these rats.

Take precautions and trap them.

Vampire Bats: The Only Solution For Now Is The AutoGate (Testing) !!!

The Belara BH is with not free from "Predators" attacks.

First it was those cockroaches.

Later discovered a number of dead birds on the floor usually without head or or without bodies.

Some were with bodies being eaten by some creatures.

These daily occurrence was very disturbing.

Two dead bodies were found nearly every day.

If nothing was done the number of dead birds per year will be at least 365 X 2 = 730 birds.

I was plucking a figure that every bird is worth at least 250 rm.

In total per year the owner will loose something like 250 X 730 = 182,500 rm.

That was how much the BH owner is loosing if nothing was done to prevent the predator.

Based on many reports received I zoom to those Vampire bats.

They came in at around 9:00 pm onward and after satisfying their thirst will leave before the morning light.

There is no proven method except this so called auto gate with a completely shut gate with a 3" X 10" wide slot.

This was said to be working at a BH located nearby, Kuala Berang.

Immediately after discussing with my partner I went ahead to make the necessary arrangements.

The fabricator came to the BH and measured the exact size which he needed to fabricate.

One week after the measurement he came with his workers to install the unit.

After a few days the autogate seems to be opened and not closed.

Again got the fabricator to come over to check what went wrong.

Just some normal operation steps were wrong especially on the timing and the fuse.

He managed to correct the gate and hopefully it will operated as per the specification.

It must shut at 8:30 pm and open at 6:00 am.

This autogate is still on a trial run basis and I hope it will help to minimize the damage incurred by those vampire bats.

90* Corners: Those That Were Occupied Were Installed With Plastic Rings While New One .............

(The First Egg Laid On A Fake Nest Is Your Objective)

Something that I did at Belara BH.

This have something to do with those 90* nesting planks corners.

The old used corners were installed with an object to force the same couple to move to the flat areas while those that were still unoccupied were installed with triangular fake nests.

These explanations might help you to understand why:

Main purpose to install a gadget at the 90* corners, (already occupied) is to shift force the old tenants to erect their new nests on the flat areas.

If you continue to carry out this occupied 90* corners you will soon find out at the percentage of corner shaped nests are getting lesser while those with 180* shape starts to increase.

The more you cover (those with nests) the more you will increase the 180* shape nests.

What you should consider doing is to plan that every time you carry out your harvesting you focus on those 90* corners as your main target.

Get ready with the 90* covering gadget (plastic chains or steel plates) for immediate installation.

Yes you harvest the nest and immediately install the gadget.

If you do not do immediately install them you might forgot which corners were occupied since after nest harvesting the marking left are not easily traceable.

What about those that are not occupied?

My suggestion or idea is to install them with a triangular fake nest.

Yes every 90* corner should be installed with a triangular fake nest to act at your bait or trap.

At Belara BH I installed two rows of cross woods beam to beam area.

This exercise created at least 1000  new 90* corners.

What I did was to install a triangular fake nests.

Some were made of silicone and some were Styrofoam.

My main reason being to lure those new couples to quickly adopt this new BH.

I will allow them to use these fake nests for two cycles and after which you know what I planned to do.

You will soon see most of these triangular fake nests will be replaced with those gadget (plastic chains or plates).

The quicker they erect their nests the better the rate of birds population inside this BH.

The time will come where all fake nests will be totally removed and what will be left are those gadgets.

This should be your way of doing thing and I am sure you read my mind.

Use you common sense and understand that our main objective is to get any young couple that entered your BH to be your new tenant.

All that you need to do is to get the new couple to built their nest and lay their first egg.

Remember try to get them to lay their first egg.

I hope by now you know why !!!!

(How It Used to Be)

(Cross Woods Installed and Created More 90* Corners)

(Installed Triangular Fake Nests Facing the flying in path)

(Silicone Made Fake Nests)

(Prepared The Plastic Chain)

(Cut Into 6" Long Each)

(Installed at 90* corners that were occupied before)

(Another best option is to cover the 90* corners with plate)

Belara BH: A New Hole Just For The Morning Light !!!

There were at least 10-15 list of things that was done at Belara BH during its recent revamp operation.

The two weeks revamp operation went smoothly and I am glad that the revamp operation stop at about two sold weeks.

One of the most crucial thing done during the operation was to open a new hole at the monkey house for morning light.

The BH orientation especially its entrance hole was facing the south west.

Every morning the morning light will take a few minutes before reaching the main entrance hole.

I made a decision to open a new hole facing north east.

This hole was opened with about 1.5 feet wide and 1 foot high.

Its main purpose is to allow the morning light to enter the monkey house area thus provide the guiding light for those birds who wanted to leave the house at early hours.

The morning light present will allow more birds to populate lower floors.

Remember I opened a new Lubang Antara Lantai (LAL) too.

The two holes will be useful in getting those birds to the lower floors.

The new hole will not be installed with any external sound tweeters.

The only set back for this Belara BH will be those Vampire bats.

I planned to install an autogate with a 3"x 10" hole in the middle of the door but what about this new morning light hole?

I think we need to install a wire mesh to cover the whole hole areas.

Hopefully during the auto gate installation the workers will be kind enough to get the wire mesh install.

Steel Plates At Kapar BH Are Forcing Those Birds To Move To Its Sides !!!

Carried out some inspection on the performance of steel plates installed at Kapar BH recently.

I installed about 10 plates inside the BH about 2 months ago and wanted to observe the reaction of those birds.

What I did was to identify 10 candidates (3 top floor, 4 middle floor and 3 ground floor) and carry out the installations.

The best candidate will be those corners with nests and without and young babies.

Those that are empty or with two eggs will be the best candidates.

Once the nests are harvested, the plates will be installed to cover the nest spots.

I need to make sure that the flat area covering the planks are flat by at least 1.5 inches.

My prediction was that once they returned to the same spot they will have no choice but to occupy the meeting point between the plate and the wood.

They can chose the left side or the right side.

The middle curved area will be too smooth and there is no chance to cling onto the surface.

Well let me show you these pictures taken.

Not all are showing positive results.

Out of 10 only 5 with expected result while the rest seems to move to a new location.

5 out of 10 is still a good rate i.e 50% success.

The only setback adopting this technique is its cost.

The plate about 6"X 9" with 4 holes drilled cost about RM9.

The cheaper alternative will be the plastic chain.

No matter what the cost is I think this method is proven to be effective.

Enjoy these pictures taken:

What More To Be Done To Attract More Birds To Stay !!!

 (A Successful BH In Raub Running With 2 External and 4 Internal Sounds)

One BH owner asked me on what other things that can lure more birds to stay in his BH.

Beside making his BH floors wet and running with two external and two internal sounds he was not satisfied.

Earlier he followed by advice about removing those corner covers.

He used to install wooden corner cover on every 90* corners created on his nesting planks.

He also installed the 90* corners with triangular fake nests.

Yes he carried out this advice and painstakingly installed them himself.

And now he is asking me what more can he do to make his BH more attractive.

I was a bit taken back but told him on something which he might want to do.

What about increasing the number of sounds?

He was puzzled and asked me what I was driving at.

He already increased the number of sounds inside his BH.

Currently he has two external sounds and two internal sounds.

Is 4 not enough?

Well since you asked me what more to be done, I think the next thing that you can do is to increase the number of internal sounds, I suggested to him.

My idea is to increase the number of internal sounds from currently 2 to 4 sounds.

The two he installed so far was SuperBabyKing and SuperBabyQueen.

What I proposed to him was to add two more like NBU and Pukau.

The last two are external sounds but soft and gentle enough to make the whole house more lively.

He shook his head and told me that he will think about it.

What need to be done is to install about 10-15 additional tweeters per sound per floor.

Once that is done he can pull two separate lines to his BH data room.

He need to add two new amplifiers for the two sounds.

Let me follow up with him if he have gone ahead with this new idea (to him).

Note:  This method is currently practiced by a BH owner in Raub Pahang.  This BH now have almost 6,000 nests after into operation about 5.5 years.

Figs Tree At Kapar BH Fruiting Within 1 Year !!!

The air layered figs tree planted at Kapar BH land area finally bare fruits.

It was air layered in Sungai Patani and transferred direct to the nursery on June 2014.

The three plants were planted nicely and you can read in this link:

http://swiftletfarming.blogspot.com/2014/06/pantai-remis-bh-planted-3-new-figs-trees.html

(When I first planted: June 2014)

(Look at how tall it is now: June 2015)

After one year one of the three is fruiting.

I hope the other two will also start fruiting.

Since it was the first there was no figs warps around.

I hope to see some during my next visit.

If they are not there I need to do some figs warps transfer.

Main purpose to have these tree around your BH is to generate insects naturally.

If every fruit produce let say 100 figs warps, you might have a few million of them flying around the tree every season when the tree starts to bear fruits.

I am glad that this first air layered tree is beginning to show result.

I have air layered another 10 for some orders in hand.

Enjoy these pictures taken.

Belara BH: Full of Traps and Baits !!!

The Belara BH will be handed over, officially, to the owner this Tuesday June 30th 2015.

I plan to fly in via Subang old airport using firefly air at 7:35 am and expect to be at Kuala Trengganu by 8:35 am.

The owner will be at the location by 3:00 pm.

I will be at site once landed to do some final touches especially on the installation of a set of autogate for vampire bats protection.

A new hole for morning light need to be installed with wire mesh screen.

However let me give you some idea on how I think this BH will be a hit with those wild birds.

Based on the harvesting records the number of nests removed so far hit almost 20 kg, in total.

The exact number of nests in the BH was never monitored, but the person in charged indicated that the last count was about 837 pieces.

One very interesting point of interest was the number of corner nests harvested.

The percentage of corner shaped nests was found to be 70%.

This BH was with no corner covers installed.

Every harvesting operation the nests were removed and nothing was done to reduce the number of corner nests.

This have to be changed it the owner wanted to get more 180* nests shape.

The way to go is to discourage the same couple to move to the side and erect their new nest on the straight planks.

What was introduced so far was the use of those plastic chains.

The other method, slightly more expensive, is to cover the used corners with stainless steel plates.

If during every harvesting operation this additional job is carried out I am sure in no time the corner nests percentage will drop.

However for this Belara BH, I introduced more 90* corner due to the installation of cross woods.

Every intersection there will be  4 new corners.

These will be new corners and I am sure those new couples will love to grab the new property.

I installed about 900 feet of additional nesting planks just for cross woods.

With this installation I estimated that the total new 90* corners was around 1800 new corners.

All these new corners were provided with a triangular fake nest.

Yes I created the highly sort for property with bed.

Main reason is to make every new couple to adopt this new house once they entered and stay for one night.

Once they entered and found this new property laced with super pheromone 3X liquid, they will be stuck there for the rest of their life.

These fake nests will be on a temporary basis and once occupied they shall be removed and installed with either the plates or the plastic chains.

I hope within 12 months or so all these 90* corners will be taken up.

When that happen I am very sure the nests numbers will triple.

Let us hope for the best.

If my prediction is right we will have something to learn from this new experience.

I will let you all know from time to time.

My task now is to get the owner to sign the maintenance agreement.