I have visited many failed farms and observed many mistakes in it. One of them is the faulty design which commonly repeating by those who build farms. If you are not skillful enough you would never noticed it. Let me ask you how do you create a good Micro? A good micro mean it constantly remains the same being the temp, humidity, aroma, etc. Tho it may change but the variant of changes should be small. If the changes are above the tolerable gap then the whole micro would turns upside down and Swiftlet would avoid this farm and never make it their home.
There are so many things being internal or external that could affect and influence the micro. One of the forty things that could affect the micro is…… wind movement. Therefore when designing a farm one must bear in mind about the wind factor.
Sadly how many Newbies, Sifu, Semi-sifu, well known Consultants are skillful enough to know this or should I say how many actually think of this before they design a farm. To your surprise most of them knew very little about the wind factor, some don’t even know that the wind factor existed.
Thru my experiences I’ve spoken to many of them and surprisingly not many know about the wind factor but they were engaged to build many farms. (Even built more than me)
Let’s look at the Picture A:
The reason being for building a slope claimed by them was to push the birds to fly inside. Some called it flying path. No..No..No.. this is not flying path. They have mistaken it.
This is the wind flying path not the birds flying path. The slope would direct the wind into the farm like an airplane wings thus making the Micro upside down. The slope constantly creating pressure thus pushing the wind further into the nesting.
Once the micro is jeopardized then that is the end of the farm. Perhaps there would still be Swiftlets making nests in such farm but the number would be small.
Picture B:
The 90dg wall at the Dg helps to slow down the wind from reaching the nesting. It works as a barrier. When the wind hits the Dg wall it would slow down and directed to the roving area. The oscillation would be at roving and it stop there. Unlike Picture A , the nesting area is less affected thus birds feel more comfortable in farm B
After visited many failed farms I noticed how little all these so called farm builders and designers know. If one can't even understand and differentiate between Birds flying path and Wind factor could they build a good Swiftlet farm?
Good Swiftlet Farming All !
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