Three different locations in Sabah and I am glad that I managed to solve two BH owners problems and help to check if a piece of land is suitable for swiftlet farming.
The first was in Tawau at a location called Wakudo.
Very closed to the sea but beside a number of shrimp breeding ponds.
Based on my talk with this BH owner he went into swiftlet farming without any knowledge what he was in for.
A neighbor who operated a BH convinced him that he will be a very rich man with at least 10-20 kg of nests per month within a very short period of time.
With such a lucrative income he agreed to use the neighbor's expertise to erect a BH for him.
This was the beginning of what I called a nightmare.
His BH after all the promises and high expectation managed to have about 15-20 nests after almost 1 year and the numbers stop growing.
It must have cost him a fortune but there was no return.
I was invited to inspect and he wanted to know what can be the possible reasons.
My conclusions have direct implication to the so call "unqualified" consultant.
One major reason was the single wall design.
The temperature recorded during my inspection was 37.8*C.
I told the owner that his so called "consultant" is a consultant specializes in the erection of SPA and not a BH.
The overall design was awkward and it will be very hard to get those birds to enter the building.
The only think that I can do was to list down all the flaws that he need to rectify and the first would be to shield all the walls from the inside.
In Sandakan, I was met by a newbie whose BH was far worse than the guy in Wakubo, Tawau.
This young man seems to have problems with his BH as soon as the work resumed.
He engaged a consultant from Kota Kinabalu and I think the way the BH was designed was another monkey piece. Sorry it should been "Masterpiece".
I have never come across this bad design until I got to sit quietly at one corner of the building to think very deeply how to revamp it.
Usually it will be a straight forward thing but this strange designed BH make me think very deep and sweat to the bone to help the owner.
Again I blamed the consultant for using the owner's money to try his strange ideas.
I was told by the young man that he terminated the contractor before the BH was completed.
"Harry he allowed those expansive Seraya planks to be soaked in the rain. I asked him to replaced all of them he refused." he said.
I saw those fungus all over the place but I still wanted him to know that the BH design was a disaster.
The way the entrance hole was erected was wrong, there were so many partitions walls inside, the light polluting the nesting rooms were totally not acceptable.
After a very long hours I managed to complete my hand written report to him explaining about all the flaws and how to correct them.
He read my report and thank me very much for the complete work.
He was happy but I wish I can do more to help him with his "so many problems" BH
While in Kuala Penyu I brought a newbie who flew in from Singapore.
I was asked to conduct a bird call test and make the necessary recommendations to erect a BH on a piece of agricultural land.
We started around 4:30 am to reach the location.
The test gadget was faulty but we were lucky that there was a house nearby who allowed us to use their electricity.
The test went well and the number of birds responded was above the minimum number.
I took one morning to complete the visit report and handed over to the land owner a full 25 pages report.
I hope he will review my recommendations properly.
If he follow my recommendations he will have a very little chance to fail.
Well I am now back in Kuala Lumpur.
Just call me at 017 7551318 if you need any advice about your BH.
No comments:
Post a Comment