We had a good discussion about Swiftlet farming yesterday night, all about the design, internal environment, the setting up of a new farm, what is needed and all the requirements of a good farm.
I came back quite late yesterday nite and I have to force myself to wake up this morning to go for a meeting ( not swiftlet stuff my other permanent job). I managed to reach my appointment place on time. As usual in K.L the traffic jam is crazy, you need to be early to avoid traffic jam.
Yesterday discussion was initiated by my reader from Sarikei, Sarawak. He is an avid reader of my blog from the beginning since then he has been calling me quite often to ask questions and finally he decided to see me yesterday.
The sole purpose was to ask and discuss about his soon to be farm. It was a 4 storey shop lot which he wanted to convert the 2 top floors of the building into swiftlet farm.
He told me that he had planned this for almost 2 years now, searching info from the net, meeting many sifus,etc to have an in dept understanding of this beautiful business and yet he doubted his knowledge and foremost the farm's design. Therefore he decided to fly over here to meet up with me.
As I was quite tight with my load of works where I only could meet him after working hours. He has to accommodate to my schedule.
He was a true swiftlet enthusiast, brought along with him were pictures of his shop, internal and external, the roof, the window, doors,etc. This would certainly makes planing on paper easy. He also drafted out a plan of the structure of the building indicating the columns and beams.
Good homework! This will help in my planing and design. That is not all he also drafted out a design of his own. Well it is quite good but not good enough.....sorry .....
Certain measurements or sizes areas in his farm were either too small or too big. There were also error in placing the inter hole, inter room hole,etc. All were re-drafted and a new measurements were given.I explained to him the reason and the importance of the location & placement of the above and explained in details why such measurements & sizes were needed.He was very happy about it.
He was very obsessed with sound as he told me that he has hundred of them which he bought from many different consultants..some are very expensive . I asked him do you know which one is good that could attract birds to stay & to make nest?
He replied no, he said as long it could attract lots of birds then it is a good one. I replied" we are talking about quality not quantity.The bottom line is to attract birds to stay & make nests. Attracting lots of birds to come and play at the sound is of useless if they don't stay and make nests.
I also explained to him about the importance of placement of tweeters & the types of sounds that should be used in farms (ext & Int). I told him don't be too excited about sounds that could attract few hundred of birds to come and play at the entrance when a farm is started. The numbers of birds will reduce greatly after couple of weeks and later probably non will come and play anymore.
A good sound could make & persuade young birds to make nest and in long term it will enhance population grow as the numbers of nests increased. The yard stick is how many nests will there be in a farm in a given period of time, not how many birds could it attract to come and play in a given period.
I told him you could ask as many questions as you want. He replied" that's about it for now as I couldn't think of any now because my farm's plan is finalised.
I replied" should you think of one you could always email me.
For sure he is one happy guy as all his questions were answered with facts & details. I bet he did learn lots from this meeting.
Good luck to him!
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