Will Those Young Birds Return To Build Their Nest With Their Parent ???

 

(Overlapped nest:  What do you think the cause of this strange phenomena?)

(An example of overlapping nests. Who do you think is the new guy? Thank you to Dat for this picture.)

Just imagine your new BH having very little problem to bring every new bird that was hatched inside your BH.

If you BH is with 50 nests you will generate about 100 young birds during every breeding cycle.

If all these 100 young birds will return home to more or less the same place where they were hatched, you will now have 100 new nests (assuming they bring back their own partner).

How can you lure those young birds to return to the precise location where they were hatched and raised?

Is there any method that can make them wanting to stay beside their parent?

I was inspecting a BH in Denkil a few days back and saw this strange phenomena when two nests were overlapping.

What I meant by overlapping is that there is a new nest on the old nest and a part of the new nest was on the old nest.

I am sorry that I did not take a picture of this strange thing.

I will during my next visit just to prove my point.

The question that came to my head was the following:

Is the new nest belongs to the young bird that was hatched inside the old nest?

If the answer is yes, I think we should think of the best ways to lure those birds back as closed as possible to where they were hatched.

I was installing those fake nests inside the Sungai Rambai BH and something strike me.

Why don't I install two fake nests beside a number of old nests?

If those young birds returned home after they took their first flight out, they will have their own nest (fake nest in this case) to stay or perhaps continue staying beside their parent?

I think there is a very strong chances that they will adopt the fake nest.

Let see if my intuition works.

 

 (Better to have two fake nests beside the real nest)

 

(there is a baby inside the real nest)

 

(I think they will adopt this fake nest)

Sungai Rambai BH: Started With A Large Crowd......

 (The monkey house with two separate entrance holes)

Completed the Sungai Rambai BH and now taking a short break for the Malaysia Day weekend.

I was very exited but tired after getting the BH into operation.

The last two days seems to be visited with a large number of swiftlet in the evening.

On the last day checked the sounds in operation and make sure the volume were on the right level.

The two floors, middle and ground, was with this special two sets of tweeters playing two different internal sounds.

The pink colored cable was with babyking while the green was with supermating.

My main intention was to evaluate the effectiveness not only the sound but which sound they preferred.

During my next visit I will check their preferred tweeters and see which one they prefer most.

The next interesting installation was those rope soaked with Super Pheromone liquid.

The key to its success was the right location.

I went around the BH to look at the floor with bird shit markings that are long and not one spot type.

Once located I climbed a ladder to check on the plank condition.

I was attracted to this particular plank with lots of saliva markings.

This might be the best place to install the rope.

Using a number of screws I managed to install the rope above 1.5 inches from the lower lip.

There were above 5 boxes that were installed and hopefully the result will be good.

The next new idea was to install a number of wet floor pool using those blue canvas.

The pool system in similar to those wet floor but without the sand and bird shit.

Each floor was with two pools mainly inside the VIP rooms.

Wet the floor a bit and I am sure for the next few weeks the BH humidity will be high.

The roof top was with a pond.

What I did was to clean the pool removing lots of water fungi and filled up with fresh water.

I was not surprise to see a number of martins and swiftlet skimming above for a sip.

I took a lot of troubles to install about 400 fake nests.

Something extra that I did was to remove the curved corners and create a number of 90* corners.

To make it more attractive I installed those 90* styrofoam fake nests hand made.

My main objective is to attract as many swiftlet was possible within the shortest possible time inside this BH.

All these styrofoam will be a part of my plan.

Once their number reached 300 couples we will moved to the next level of populating the BH.

 (Cleaning the roof pond)

(Once cleaned filled it with water)

 

(The cluster tweeters in place)

 (The rope scented with super pheromone aroma)

 

 (The curved corners before removal)

 

 (Once removed)

 

(Installed with 90* styrofoam fake nests)

 

(The power tweeters)

(My target is to lure young birds hatched from this nest beside it)

 

(Just count the types of fake nests installed)

 

(The chocolate tweeter playing external sound)

 

(Water pond made of canvas).

Will The Young Birds Return Home To Be Beside Their Parent?

THIS WILL BE MY NEXT NEW ARTICLE !!!

The Rope A Dope !!!

The Sungai Rambai fake nest using scented rope was successfully installed.

It looks fined and I hope those new tenants will like it.

The type of rope selected was cotton fiber with plastic layer inside.

I got the rope at ACEs hardware at IKEA building in Petaling Jaya.

Soaked it for two days and let it dry.

Once ready installed inside those so called nesting planks boxes located inside one of the VIP room.

I used those screws to anchor the rope onto the planks.

The gap between one screw to the other has to be about 10 inches or less.

If not the rope will sag and will behave like those swings in the park.

Have a look at some of the selected pictures and please copy it if you wanted to.

Hopefully this new idea will attract lots of birds into this Sungai Rambai BH.

 

 

One Way To Attract More Birds Into Your Monkey House Areas, Why Not? !!!!

A small chat with one of my disciple from Ho Chi Min City Vietnam.

"How are your Pak Harry" his first question.

I am fine and how are you.

"Good , as well" he immediately replied.

He was trilled with my response.

"The super pheromone liquid is really good so far." he follow up reply.

" All of the users praised the product." he continued.

I wanted some idea about the use of super pheromone.

' Should think of new ways of using it.' I expressed my desire.

"You have any new ideas?" he was trying to pull my leg.

"I have tried something new by using the chicken coop humidifier to spray." he answered.

' Not a bad idea' i told him.

"The result is pretty good" he explained.

'Any kind of extra ordinary things that happened?' I asked.

"You can refer to this video clip http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpKc06c58HQ."

"It was captured at the spraying time" he confirmed.

I think you all should watch it here and hopefully this will make a new chapter to your method of improving your BH nests population.

Let me know if you wanted to know more about the method he applied.

Call Harry at 017 7551318

Sungai Rambai BH Revamp Operation Now In Progress !!!

 

(Before)

Started my mobilization to site last Wednesday September 4th 2013.

Got my boys to settle down and the next day started the operation.

The older tackled the ground floor reorganizing of the partitioning while the younger was with the external sound tweeters around the Monkey house.

I make sure that the operation went as per my plan.

The monkey house areas were installed with:

a) A hexagonal tweeter.
b) A mini Bazooka
c) 8 pieces of power tweeters (for last tango).
d) two kite tweeters.
e) 8 pole tweeters.

 

(Now)

Looks many but I still think that it is not enough.

If there were no residential houses closed to the BH I would have installed a few more power tweeters(4 more), mini bazooka (1 more) and pole tweeters (2 more).

I was trying to be nice and considerate.  I hope they appreciate my concerns.

The next task was to reorganize the orientation of so many partitions on each floor.

The previous consultant must have been a person who believed in the idea of having rooms on each floor.

In this particular case he went over the board in putting too many and some rooms were just too small which prevent those birds from making a round turn.

They actually need to fly backward if they wish to fly out of the small room.

(Can swiftlet fly backward?)

My idea is to create at least one VIP room on every floor.  The VIP room must be wide and big enough for these birds to make a round turn.

For the top most floor since its entrance hole is very closed to the main entrance door one VIP room will be adequate.

However the middle and the ground floor can have two VIP rooms at the end of the walls.

Once these are done I will look into installing those corner covers to create my special liking cluster tweeters.

Got with me 600 pieces of those cluster corner covers and still inside my Camry boot.

Each VIP room will have at least 20-25 sets of this cluster tweeters.

The ground and middle floor will used a new set of internal sound tweeters while the top most floor will have the recycled tweeters.

There will be two special ideas which I will installed on a trial or research basis.

1) I planned to have the ground and middle floor internal sound tweeters be divided into two groups.
The first set will be using those pink colored wire while the second will be connected to a green colored wire.

My idea is to play two different internal sounds to be played on the two floors.

I have discovered this new amplifier which can play two different sound on a go.

With this new idea I will get myself organized to choose the right sounds for the two lines of tweeters.

2) I wrote about the use of rope as a fake nest.  The idea originated from a friend who owned a BH in Dungun Trengganu.

What I did was to soak a piece of plastic rope with super pheromone liquid for three days.

Dry it for one day and apply it onto the nesting planks inside the VIP rooms.

I will show some pictures once installed.

The idea here is to minimize the use of super pheromone.

What we have here is to only wet the rope and dry it.  As compared to applying direct to those planks will be heavy usage of the expensive pheromone.

The rope will act as the point to anchor for those birds to erect their nests.

Once the rope are filled with those nests, we can carefully remove it.

By this method we not only reduce our cost but also recycle the use of the rope to another location.

Will tell you all more once I have all my ideas set and installed.

Something Which I Like About Sungai Rambai BH: The Dual Entrances!!!

I remember very well about a number of articles which I wrote about how to choose the right type of entrance hole for your BH.

What I did was to answer a question from someone who wanted to know which type of entrance hole is the best for a specific location.

My answer to him was as follows:

1) The right answer is to use or copy the same type of entrance hole used by your neighbor whose BH is full to the brim.
My reason is very simple.  If your neighbor's BH is full of birds they will become the young birds source of production or generator.  What you need to to harvest them to be your tenant.

To do this your BH design should be as similar as possible to the generator.

Young birds once they flew out out their home, for the first time, will usually get used to the entrance hole type of the BH where they were raised.

If you BH nearby is of different style these young birds might find it hard to enter your BH.

2) What if there are equal number of successful BHs using both the top and side entrance type?

My answer is to use both.

One the side entry and one the top entry type.

Usually a dual entrance BH will score a better rate of nest population increase.

Main reason being those young birds that were generated from the two type of entrance holes will have little difficulties to enter your BH.

This was what I preached and the reason is strait forward.

Your BH with Dual entrance will be able to suit both.

This interesting design was seen at Sungai Rambai.

See my sketch.

I have to confess that this is the first BH with dual entrance hole I ever modified.

It looks good and very much in line with my preaching.

You need to come over and have the first look so that you can copy the same design.

Call me now at 017 7551318.

I will be completing this BH revamp soon and you might miss an opportunity of a lifetime.

Wall Banging Phenomena At Sungai Rambai BH !!!

What can be the possible reasons why those swiftlet bang the walls of your BH?

Something that is not very usual and not a healthy thing to happen in your BH.

Just imagine when you enter your BH your can hear those wall slamming sound of swiftlet onto your walls or partition.

What can be the reasons, I asked myself recently after entering a BH at Sungai Rambai.

There must be some good reasons for this because in other BHs the occurrence is rare.

My predictions are as follows:

1) The birds that keep banging the walls might be those young one who were scared to see human walking into their territory.  They must have never flew out of their nest before thus are not familiar with the BH partition layout.

2) The partitions inside the BH were not properly designed and perhaps too many.

3) The birds could not find their way out since you switched on the light.  When those light were switch on swiftlet will be disorientated and will have a very tough time to find their way to the LAL.  If you want to hear lesser wall banging try to switch off the light.

4) The rooms created were too small and difficult for those birds to fly around.  Their way in is more like a one way street.  When they want to fly out they might need to fly backward since there is not enough room to make a turn.


Among the three above I found out that this BH at Sungai Rambai inclined more to the number two reason.

If you are a first timer entering a BH I think you will find that you are at a loss how to get out of the gridlock of the too many partitions laid by the previous contractor.

Some of the rooms created were as little as your bathroom at home.  This will make those birds difficult to turn thus banging the wall is more common.

Have a look at this sketch of how it looks like from the top view:

I have decided to remove many of the partitions and reduce the number of rooms like the sketch below:

The same thing shall be carried out on the other two floors above.

Let us give those birds more room to make their turns and reduce their wall banging from now on.

Remember if they flew at a high speed and bang those walls they will be injured or maybe experience some kind of concussion.

Birds cannot have any injury or worse concussion.

Once they are injured they will have little chance of survival.

So when you wanted to organize your BH floors try to think about these so called wall banging phenomena.

Try to have not too many partitions.

Each room must have enough size for the birds to turn, about 4 meters by 4 meters at least.

If you have never entered a BH before and would like to see the inside please call me at 0177551318.

One beautiful experience of a lifetime.

Come and see the whole three floors and explore the top most roof area with lots of water.

Have You Tried Using Rope ????

Something new and sensational.

"Pak Harry have you ever though of using rope as your fake nests?" a weird question from a BH owner from Dungun.

I was at home when this BH owner whose BH is in Dungun called me for a cup of coffee.

He was one of those successful BH owner who applied "Super Pheromone" inside his BH.

His method was to inspect every fresh bird shit spot on the floor and once located he will apply the SP onto the spot where those birds are staying.

His method propelled the nest number from about 50 to 200 within three months.

This time we chat about new findings.

His interesting idea was the use of rope as fake nest.

What you need to do, according to his idea, was to anchor the rope to each box of your nesting plank.

Just inside the VIP room will be good enough.

It must be about 1.5 inches above the bottom lip of the nesting planks.

Those birds will use the rope to cling to and soon after they will build their nest using the rope to cling to.

The nests will be mainly on the nesting planks and only the bottom part will be touching the rope.

Once the number of nests reaches about 10 or so you can gently remove the rope and move it to another location.

By carrying out this technique you will have a box occupied and reuse the rope at another location.

What if you soak the rope into those liquid pheromone?

That will be an added advantage.

Soak the rope into the liquid pheromone for about 2 -3 days and dry it up.

Be careful not to hold it with your bare hand.

Use those rubber gloves.

Let it dry up and wrap it up with a plastic sheet.

Bring to site and install them inside your VIP room especially the areas with a number of bird shit spots on the floor.

Anchor the scented rope with screw or clip or steel band.

Once done cut the excess rope.

Monitor the progress during every visit into your BH.

A very interesting idea and I hope to start applying it at Sungai Rambai BH.

Another Interesting Idea To Be Adopted By A Newbie In Sabah !!!

I happened to meet a BH owner for the second time during my recent trip to Sabah.

He was the first BH owner who came to fetch me at the Kota Kinabalu airport and took me straight to his BH.

After more than 1 hour drive we reached the destination and my visit took about 1 hour plus.

Due to time constrain I advised him that his BH visit report should be ready by the next day.

The very next day he came to collect the report and it was during this session I told him to quickly get something from a friend who recently harvested his BH nests.

He was a bit baffled with my idea but after a lengthy explanation he gave a long smile and knew exactly what I was trying to tell him.

What I asked him to do was to contact another BH owner who just carried out his BH nests harvesting.

What this guy did was to harvest all those matured nests but also removed nearly 90% of those Styrofoam fake nests.

All together he removed almost 300 pieces of them and nearly 50% of it were with saliva markings (swiftlet saliva).

Each of those fake nest coated with saliva is a precious and rare to obtain asset, I told him.

If you can get then and install in you BH it will be able to quickly anchor those new visitors, I assured him.

He quickly called my other friend and tried to negotiate in getting the removed fake nests.

I told him they are worth at least a few ringgit a piece.

If he is reluctant to offer free to clear the precious rubbish just offer him a price.

This was how me managed to get a quick attention of the fake nests owner.

Once you get them in your possession try to sort them out.   Choose those with traces of saliva as the most important while the rest will be you normal fake nest.

Try to plan where to install the saliva coated fake nests at those specific areas where you know those new tenants will enter.  My suggestion was inside his VIP rooms.

Make sure you place the fake nest about 1 to 2 inches away from the internal sound playing tweeters.

You must also install on the nesting plank facing the birds flying path inside the room.

The fake nests should be at the lower part of the nesting plank.

He was so excited and managed to talk to the owner to schedule when to collect the precious fake nests for his new BH.

I will follow up with him to see if the current plan moved as per my idea.

To those who are new in swiftlet farming  the lesson from this article is that try to think of a way to quicklu populate your new BH.

Think of all the ways to get more birds to anchor inside your new BH.

One of the idea mentioned in this article is to use those fake nests that are harvested from a successful BH.

The thicker those leftover saliva on the fake nests the better it will perform in your BH.

You Should Copy This Idea To Get Your BH Wet Faster Then Normal Method !!!

If you wish to get your BH full with birds you need to make sure that your BH temperature, humidity and darkness within the right range.

The temperature must not exceed 31*C or drop below 22*C.

The room darkness must be about 2 candela light measurement.   I normally used my own technique that is if you stand 2 feet apart you will not be able to see each other.

At the best humidity required will be between 85-95%RH.

The above three is a must have.

Those swiftlet will run away if you ignore these requirements.

If you are new and wanted to erect your own BH using bricks, I would like to remind you to use double layer walls system.

Try to avoid using a single layer brick system unless you have a special method to shield the hot sun.

Last few weeks I have visited a number of BHs and one of their biggest mistake was the heat problem.

There were two BHs with similar problem and both were using a single layered wall system.

One with zinc roof while the other was without.

The one with zinc roof was about 31*C during normal weather but will hit 33 during a hot sunny day.

The one with no roof experienced nesting nest temperature of 33*C during normal weather but will shot up to 35*C during a hot day.

This was mainly contributed by the very hot roof and the walls.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Advertisement:

If you wish to quickly populate your new or old BH 

try this technique adopted by a BH owner from Dungun.

read this article about his method:

How I Populate My BH Using Find, Locate and Spray.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I told both owners to heat shield their BH walls while the one with not roof above the cement slab I have no choice but to shut down the top most floor.

As for the room humidity I suggest the use of wet floor system added with humidifiers.

The wet floor shall be placed inside the VIP room and the main hall.

The humidifiers shall be a kind of back up just in case the humidity falls below the minimum range.

One interesting method to top up those wet floor pool observed inside a BH in Kinarut Sabah was the use of water storage tank on every floor.

The owner wanted to top up those wet floor system as fast as he can so that he will not be staying around inside his BH for too long, he got this idea of putting a reasonable sized water tank on each floor.

What he did was to open the tank cover and scoop fresh water using those pails and pour them into all the pools on each floor.

The time taken to flood all his water pools was faster and easier.

He take less than 15 minutes to flood all, about four water pools.

A brilliant idea and I recommend this technique so that you will not be inside your BH for too long.

Most people will use those water hose to fill up those pools and it will take at least 15-20 minutes per pool.

Have a look at the above sketch for reference.

Be Careful In Using The Monkey House !!!

One very common mistake by many newbies are on the selection of their main entrance hole.

You can choose either the monkey house type or the top entry type.

If you choose the monkey house type you need to opt for side entrance and not opening the monkey house roof ( a combination of Monkey House and Top Entry).

A very common mistake and will eventually lead to much lesser birds occupying your BH.

I was visiting this BH in Papar, Sabah in August 2013 and saw the exact same mistake.

The owner was not very familiar about this but I explained to him a long list of my reasons why.

I stressed to him that I have accoutered this type of BHs before and once they followed my advise those birds started to enter.

"So what should I do now Pak Harry"  he begin to ask for the right solution.

Well what he should do was to cut of the rectangular shape and turned in into a slanted structure.

Let me show you what I sketched for him.

This was how his current entrance area looks like.

He is using a rectangular box about 6 feet height and the birds have to enter from the top roof opening.

My main observation when you use this type of entrance hole is that those new birds will find it very difficult to locate the top opening areas.

They will circled around the box searching for the entrance area and once they could not find it they will dash away and you loose a golden opportunity.

This was what I suggested him to do:

He might think that I am wrong but trust me I have done this before and the new shape designed is much better with bigger entrance size.

If you use the original method you will make those young birds to circle the monkey house to find the entrance hole.

If they could not find the hole they will soon run away for some other better things to do.

If you changed or adopt the one I proposed those young birds once reaches the lower part of the wall will be able to find the entrance hole and will quickly enter your BH.

I have also sketched where to install the hexagonal tweeter plus two kite tweeters beside it.

Try this method and I assure you that your BH will get more visitors inside.

All these are from my very long experiences plus site observation.

Trust me with this and you will not loose anything except more birds will populate your BH.

Call my number or write to me if you need more information

My telephone number is +60177551318 or email to harryswiftlet@yahoo.com

________________________________________________________________________________

If you wish to quickly populate your BH

you need to read this interesting article again.

Go to or click this:

How to quickly populate your new BH 

________________________________________________________________________________ 

Breeding Of Talapia Fish Around Your BH !!!!

While waiting for your BH to produce those raw nests you can earn some income by breeding fish around your BH.

This was what happened at this BH located at Kinarut, Sabah.

The owner came out with marvelous idea of using the "longkang" or drain around his BH to breed Talapia fish.

He must have planned it well ahead of time before building his BH.

His main advantage was a constant supply of fresh water from a hill nearby.

It seems that someone have erected a small dam at one of the various fresh water streams closed his his BH and piped them into a storage tank.

This fresh water was used to flood his drain about 3 feet deep by 2.5 feet wide.

Usually most BH owners will only use this kind of drain to deter ants from entering their BH.

In this particular case the owner opted to use it at his Talapia breeding pond cum ants prevention.

"Pak Harry welcome to Sabah and today I wanted to harvest some fish from my BH.  Please come over to see the harvesting technique." he proudly announced his decision.

I was very lucky to be invited to observe this unusual activity carried out by a BH owner.

Have a look at the attached video clips.

He collected those big fish into several plastic bags and distributed them to his partners and workers.

The fish looks healthy and some were more than a kilogram each.

During our way back to KK he confirmed that once you put in the fish they will continue to reproduce.

This will mean that he no longer need to introduce any more fish fries.

An interesting concept as long as you have a constant supply of fresh water from natural stream.

Maybe your next BH can adopt this interesting fish breeding concept.