Well it’s commonly said that if you want to have a successful farm you need to attract swiftlets from the cave or from the wild. I mean those wild birds. (I strongly disagree)
I was wondering is there anything such thing as wild swiftlets? In Sabah and Sarawak there are many huge caves some are inhibited by Swiftlets. In the West Malaysia there are just few caves some may not have swiftlets at all.
Those birds that most of us see while doing Birds Test are from farms. I could confidently say all of them. (Except those Tests that were done in S’bah & S’wak but…..)
It is not easy to attract Swiftlets from cave to stay in farm. Though human is trying to imitate the condition of cave environment and hoping that the swiftlets would stay and make nests but somehow it doesn’t work this way. The many generations of Swiftlet that lived in farms have adapted to the farm’s environment and its condition. There are unable to live in cave if all farms are destroyed.
Don’t be too happy to think you could attract wild birds to stay and make nests in your farm. It is much easier to attract Swiftlets that are from farms than from caves.
In fact there have been few researches done that the cave swiftlets is somehow different from farm swiftlets. (Hybrid type)
The farm swiftlets have been domesticated and the environments they grew up and stay are different from caves even though it shares some similarities.
Many trying to create farms that shared the internal condition similar to cave and to discover later that it couldn’t attract any Swiftlet. Some of the examples were: 15-20ft height between floor, Building a big farm to imitate the size of caves and so on.
They had forgotten or perhaps without knowing that the cave swiftlets are somehow different from farm swiftlets. Both have different living habitat though they shared the same food (insect).
So it is uncommon to see farm that have a temperature of 31C or more with thousands of nests whereas for the cave the average temperature is around 26-28C. The smell from the guano of the cave is also different as it’s mixed with Bats and other creatures dropping. Whereas in the farm the dropping are solely from Swiftlets.
This is evolution and adaptation. Farm swiftlets have adapted to such condition and evolved over time. There are many more differences between them.
In-depth understanding is utmost important in order for one to build a farm that suitable for swiftlets . In fact we’re build farms to attract young swiftlets from other peoples’ farm not swiftlet from caves don’t forget that.In Peninsular Malaysia you can forget about wild swiftlets.
Good farming all!
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