(An industrious BH owner)
Met this young man from Trengganu for a cup of coffee at TH Hotel KT recently.
He stumbled on to my blog a few weeks ago and explained his BH problems.
One very strange happening at his BH was the number of nests simply were not multiplying.
They stop at 350 pieces.
His BH now is 5 years old.
What can be the main problems and how to reactivate the nests to start growing?
During my meeting with him I explained my thought on the followings:
1) His BH now has crossed the phase 1 status where he need not pay too much attention to those birds from his neighbors. With 350 nests his BH now can self populate or can go on autocruise mode. Do you know why? Let us calculate how many young birds are being hatched and breed inside his BH. Every cycle there will be 350X2= 700 young birds. Every year (12 months) there will be 3 breeding cycles. So every 12 months his BH will generate 700X3=2100 young birds. If he can capture all of them he should be able to generate a total of 2100/2=1050 nests. Do you think he should be paying more attention to his young birds to make sure they return home?
2) I am not saying that he should totally forget about those wild birds from his neighbors but what I was trying to impress on him was that he should make every effort to find out what is causing those young birds to abandon the house where they were hatched and grew. There must be some solid reasons why they are not returning home after taking their first flight out of the BH.
3) If you read carefully about his BH history you will find this fine print. His BH is now 5 years old. I pointed to him what happened when a BH crossed this age in fact 3 years is when this "Dry BH Syndrome" will surface. When you just complete your BH, those water added to you cement mix plus those heavy rain that soaked your BH base and walls are being evaporated into the air and of course your nesting rooms. They were the main water source inside your BH that keep your BH moist. What happen if all these waters are totally evaporated? Your BH will be too dry and those young birds will not return home.
4) One very easy method to check if your BH is too dry is to clean your BH floor and soak the wall and your floor with water. If you soak them and they dried up within 10 minutes of so, you know what is causing your young birds to run away from home.
5) My suggestion to him is to start wetting his BH floors and walls. First clean the floor and once clean he must wet the walls and the floors for at least 3 conservative days. If he can extend to 5 days it will be better.
6) Make sure all his humidifiers are working properly. Install at least 2-3 humidifiers (chicken coop with no blade) and make sure they are activated using hygrostat. Set the hygrostat at 88% or 90%.
He promised to carry out the above and promised to inform me about the nests progress.
Let us wait for his advise if my recommendations are right for the sake of increasing those nests growth.
If he can he should invite me to view what more can be done to improve his BH.
I have a very strong feeling that his BH is too bright.
He need some additional advice on what to do with his sound system too.
Call me at 0177551318 is your BH is facing a similar nests growth stopping problems.
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