Bamboo Mat : Doing Some Field Test On This Strange Material !!!

Stumbled upon this new material that might help to generate more 180* shape nests.

As a BH owner you will realized that most of those nests found in your BH are at those 90* corners.

If you install a normal corner covers those birds wills till erect their nests on these corners.

It is very difficult to force them to erect a so called 180 degrees shape nests.

For those who are very new let me tell you why we should force those swiftlet to erect a 180* shape nests.

The cost of odd shape nests are lower than those that are 180* shapes.

The cost variation per kilogram can drop by about RM 500 to RM 1000 per kilogram.

If you harvest say 10 kilograms and nearly half are those odd shapes your will loose around RM 2500 to RM 5000 per harvest.

This is considered to be a waste of resources.

What we need is to force those swiftlet to erect 180* shape nests.

How can we force them?

My answer is simple.  Find something which they like and install for them to erect those 180* shape nests.

I have recently stumbled onto this idea of bamboo mats.

These mats are made of bamboo strips weaved in a mat measuring about 6 inches wide and come in about 6 feet long.

You can cut them into the length of your nesting planks and staple them up.

The good thing about this mat is that it give a kind of grip for those birds to cling to.

Once they can cling easily they will soon start making their nest.

You can now do away with those fake nests (I think).

The mat can be move from one location to the other if you wanted to try.

I have this plan to use this mat in a BH in full.

The experiment is to proof that the mat works.

If it works in our environment I would suggest we should not only start using it but perhaps look into setting a factory to make them locally.

It will be cheaper and perhaps help those poor bamboo farmers.

Let me try to import in for trial and see what happen.