How To Force Your Tenants To Use The Flat Part Of The Nesting Planks !!!

During my recent visit to six BHs in two days I was asked by one of the BH owner on what steps he should do next.

Nearly all the four BHs he owned seems to be reasonably populated but most of it were at the 90* corners.

I advised him that he need to do something to encourage his tenants to populate the flat areas so that the nests qualities fetch a higher value.

He is well aware that the price of 90* corner nests is way much lower in value as compared to those 180* cup shape nests.

"So Harry what do you think I should do with my BHs? " he asked.

My answers to him were as follows:

1) The time have come that you should look into getting your BH tagged.  The nests numbers is climbing and it will be good if he can get all the four BHs be registered with Jabatan Veterina.  All he need to do was to contact the nearest office and fill up some forms.

2) The next think he should start to look at is how to reduce those 90* shape nests.  All the four BHs are having a kind of 80%-90% with 90* shape nests.  The best is to try to use suitable corner covers that will prevent those swiftlet from repeating making the 90* nests shape.  My recommendation was to use those stainless steel plates to cover all those corners that are currently with 90* nests.

3) The stainless steel plate about 6"X 6"X1mm plate should be with a kind of grooves 1cm apart and with four holes at each corners.  The holes must be tapered to ensure a flush surface when anchored onto the nesting planks.

4) The next thing he should start looking at is to force those birds to colonies the flat surfaces.  This was what I wanted him to do.  Use those perfume bottles and Styrofoam fake nests (picture above).  Once they populate the fake nests and used the same for two cycles he should remove those fake nests and the bottle.

5) Used the 2X concentration super pheromone liquid as the aroma to fill the bottles.

6) He should also use the 3X pheromone to spray onto the fake nests.

7) If the result is good and immediate the way to go is to apply the concentrated liquid on all his nesting planks surfaces.

I hope he will adopt the above recommendations soon and see if this new idea works.

I will be monitoring his BH progress and hopefully the above idea can be deployed to all the rest of BHs that are under my care.