The above Pictures were sent to me by a reader from Kelantan. He was asking why most Swiftlet farms utilized the staircase area as Interhole? What was the reason behind it?
My reply was. It doesn’t matter where the interhole located most important it has to be located at an area that is easy for the birds to access (fly up and down).
Few factors influence the placement of interhole in farm. To name a few there are the design of the farm, the light density, the size of the farm (how many storey), etc.
All these somehow affect the placement of the interhole. Obviously an interhole could be placed anywhere in the farm but the consequences of wrong positioning would resulted the lower floor not occupied by birds. In many cases it takes years for the lower floor to have nests.
It is not wrong to use the staircase as Interhole provided it’s located at a strategic area. In most cases staircase is located in the middle section of the building (shoplot). Theoretically it wouldn’t be good for interhole to be located at the middle section because that is not the birds’ flying path unless it is located at the front or the back.
There are cases where birds only occupied the top floor of a 3 storey building and the 2 lower floors have none. There are also cases that birds occupied the lower floor only and the top floor has none.
The first cases very much have to do with the wrong placement of interhole while the second one is very much related to temp, light density and RH problem.
For a 3 storey farm the lower floor (ground) is the most challenging one. If the interhole is place wrongly it takes years to see nest in it.
Why most utilize the staircase area as interhole? The main reason is to save cost and works, secondly they do not understand the importance of birds flying path.
The bottom line is making sure the interhole is at the right position not just because the staircase area is easier to work or out of convenience.
Good Swiftlet farming all!