Last week I was at the North routine checking out the farm that I had revamped few months back. Ever since the revamp this farm has 8 full cup nests some with babies and eggs. There are also few new nests marking.
I had written about this farm in my previous post. We had managed to bring down the temperature and increased the Humidity. Before the revamp the temperature was high and the humidity was very unstable. All birds left this farm and there was not a single new bird shit spot.
We use zinc sheets to shield it from the direct sun. In between the walls and the zincs we create a gap so that there will be air movement to cool down the walls and the zinc sheets.
This theory is the same like those cooling blades on motorbike engine. The more blades it has the faster it will cool down the engine. The thinner it is the better.
By doing this we managed to reduce the temperature by 2-4 C obviously this is for walls that are not thick especially single layer bricks (sands type). If the walls are thick enough then you don’t need the zinc sheets.
The Zinc sheet is locked on to the wall by nuts on steel bars. Well it will last many years. No worries of it being blown away by strong wind and will last for many years to come.
I had seen many using orchard netting. It doesn’t work that well. In term of cost it is cheaper but it is not worth in long term. Tested, it only could reduce temp by mere 1C or less. It is not resistant to dry and wet rot. Easily tear ( in strong wind areas) probably last a year or more.
Secondly if it is not installed tightly it will move when the wind blows and often than not this scare away birds because of it large sizes.
You could see in the pictures that nests are being built at the Tweeters and you could see double tweeters. Well birds love sound and tweeters produce sound so we give them double tweeters and they give us nests. (Double nests..ha..ha.)
The owner is also a Swiftlets farm enthusiast he took the effort to install the DIY bazooka caller at the entrance hole and at the side of the building. Well it helps to attract more birds.
While my visit there I changed the Ext sound to attract more birds. Some may ask how often one should change the ext sound. Well it depends ….it could be 2 months, 3 months, 6 months, 12 months…………and so on.
It depends on the attractiveness of the sound. Well perhaps I would discuss about this in my next post.
*(The above farm uses Love Potion on a regular basic)*
.
Good Farming all!
..