Just About To Give Up !!!

An interesting story about a BH owner who wanted to give up his BH and turn back the clock !!!

He was forced to move to move his business to Thailand about a few years ago.

Then the flooding of Bangkok industrial area come in and washed his business too.

He was hoping that one day his BH in Penang will help him to retire.

This person was introduced to me by a friend who operated an swiftlet nests products outlet at Time Square Penang.

I was asked to revamp his BH and during that time I was still new in swiftlet farming revamping operation.

The task was to revamp an wrongly designed BH and harvest those birds from it's neighbour.

The neighbour's BH was just at the back of this BH and it was doing just okay but not that many birds.

I estimated that the neighbour's BH was producing the most 1 kg of bird nests a month.  Very little I told my client and don't hope too much from it.

After doing the revamp operation it was still not properly occupied by those birds except the old tenants, about 4 nests owners, came back to stay.

The BH was designed to include a VIP room, a nesting room hall, the wet floor, lots of fake nests and the opening was top entry type.

I advised him to be very patience since his shop house location was not ideally located.

After a few good months with little progress I recommended the entry type be changed to the monkey house type.

The owner reluctantly accepted and arranged for a structural builder.

The monkey house was up and during design stage I insisted that the entry points, 4 windows, to be allocated for when the frame was erected.

The fabricator followed my advise and got those four windows ready for use.

Initially I opened one entry hole facing the neighbour's BH but after two months nothing happened.

What I did next was to open all the four holes and focus on the opposite site of the neighbour's BH as the main entrance.

I moved the hexagonal tweeters to the new entrance hole and this time the owner came back with a surprised story.

"Pak Harry, I really wanted to give up the whole BH idea and reinstalled the shop house back.

Wanted to rent the shop house but..."

He came back from Bangkok and wanted to have a good look at the BH progress before making his final decision.

He was surprised that the number of nests suddenly surged to more than 20 nests.  Before this was stagnant at 4 nests.

He quickly called me and ask me to drop by to talk about upgraded the amplifier and perhaps spray some aroma.

When I stop by the BH needs some small upgrading.

I told him about the amplifier and the wet floor needs more water in them.

"Try not to change the sounds.  Both are doing okay and we will continue using it for another 3-4 months."

The wet floor was a bit too dry, I told him.

I showed him how to wet them and he now realized that all this while he was thinking a little water is enough but it was too little.

I applied one cannister of the super pheromone on the fake nests and nesting planks.

The external sound amplifier was changed to a new unit.

The only thing that I was not prepared was the replacement of those external sound tweeters.

There were a few that were not functioning.

"I will be around in the next couple of weeks and I will drop by with new tweeters and my boys to help in installing them."

He was happy with the progress but there are still lots of things to be done.