He had visited this area before there were plenty of birds and not far from here about 2-3km away there were many successful farms.
To have a second opinion I was asked to join him for this second visit to find out the feasibility of swiftlet farming in this area.
It was a cloudy Sunday afternoon later it rains during the whole journey. In fact it was a good raining day for sound test.
This area was surrounded by Oil palm plantations. The vegetation is good and not far from here about 5 km away there is a river. A wonderful place for farming. Best of all the are few very successful farms around this here.
As we drove around we found few stand alone farms here. There is one that we were particularly interested because it has two big Rottweilers as guard dog. This is the first time I came a cross a stand alone that is guarded by good breed Rottweilers. Normally the common "kampung dog" will do the job.
Well, it looks beautiful, as I observed further somehow I noticed there were problems with this stand alone farms.
As usual the security of this farm was good. There are 2 dogs guarding this farm. The fencing was with bard wire & plenty of cctv. The owner must be very concerned & careful when it comes to security.
I was wondering which come first? Security or nests & population grow ? Which is the priority. Why so many concentrated on security when the farm can't even attract birds? What is there to steal or to protect?
(OR on this side)Thru my observation there is a big problem of leakage in this farm. There is a water pool on top of this farm as there are few overflow valves at the side. The farm was just renovated as you could see that there are lots of patching to seal up the cracked gaps. This is to prevent water from sipping thru the walls.
To solve the leakage problem, therefore an additional roof was built to cool down the temp of the farm and the farm had no longer relied on the water pool and have drained out all the water.
I presumed that the owner spent too much time concentrated on the security of the farm and over looked the water proofing system of the water pool on top of the farm.
(Another window entrance on this side)This is very common for stand alone farm, 8 out of 10 shared the similar problem "leaking" Water sipping thru the concrete and walls and it wets all the nesting planks. With such condition birds will never build nest or stay in such farm.
I wonder, if they could spend few hundreds K building the farms why didn't they think about the water proofing system?
That is not all....It really surprised me when we heard some different sounds coming from this farm. We walked around it and discovered there were 2 entrance holes or shall I say two types of entrance holes.
One is the OR & the other is a window type, each at the end of each side the building. The owner must have been trying to capitalize on both type of entrances. He must have wanted a win,win& sure win situation .Well my opinion is " No..No..No.. In swiftlet farming it doesn't work this way.
This would confuse the birds. Unless otherwise the farm is very huge one , for a 3 storeys of 30 x 100 ft still not necessary to have 2 entrance holes and worst of all 2 types of different entrance holes.
From here it clearly showed there are many rectification works done to this farm and the reason behind it is that this farm is not performing well in attracting birds.
If a farm is attracting lots of birds and it has lots of nests then there shouldn't be any rectification works needed. I salute the owner for doing so many rectification works. Many farms' owner are willing to turn around their farms and many also willing to spend big amount of money to make changes to their farm in turn to hope that their farm will be successful. If they don't understand the stand alone concept or do not have the skills or relied on others that shared the same skills level as them then it is very hard to turn around the unsuccessful farm.
The farm was playing too many sounds this further confused the birds different entrances have different sounds.
Sometimes many sounds do not mean good! Unless many nests.
Having a successful Stand alone farm is not easy but it can be done. If you understand the concept and has the ability to differentiate it from the shop lot type chances that you own a successful stand alone farm is high.
Good luck to this farm..
.