Blaming Others

Blaming others is one of the most easiest ways to get out from the mess you are in. 90% failed Swiftlet farm owners never blame themselves. They blamed it on the Swiftlet farming equipments, consultants, Bhs,etc.

Did they ever think that they are the cause of all problems? “NO”.

Why Swiftlet farms fail? There are hundred and one reasons but in order to get to the root of the problem we must understand what constitutes a successful Swiftlet farm. Is it the number of nests in the Bh? Is it the number of birds in the Bh and so on that justify the success?

If yes, how come when they build their second or third Swiftlet farm after the first successful one it barely reaches 10 nests the first year. The performances were totally different from the successful ones which they had built earlier. Let’s look closer and understand what influences all these.

Swiftlet farming is all about knowledge, skills and thorough planning. Without all these even the best built Swiftlet farm, equipped with the best equipment and gadget in a populated bird area won’t guarantee success.

How effectively a Swiftlet farm could attract birds to stay and build nests very much relied on the effectiveness in controlling the Bh Micro (internal) and Macro (external). Additional to these factors we also need to have good Swiftlet farming skills. All these add together would help us in building a good successful Swiftlet farm.

Factors Influencing the Success of Swiftlet Farm

50%		50%
Skill & Knowledge Understand Bird’s flying path Understand the Bh design Understand the Characteristic & Birds Behavior Understand the breeding cycle Understand the Material of the Building (insulation  properties) Understand the equipment& gadgets usage.	Population of the Birds in the area Food source Geographical & landscaping (Trees, mountain, rivers, etc)	Birds prime zone Successful over populated Bhs Birds flying route	Temperature Humidity Light density Nesting Planks Entrance Hole Partitioning Size of the Bh	Aroma Sound System Mist sprinkler (outdoor)

If you have both of the above chances are your Swiftlet farms will have many nests in a short period. Obviously you cannot rely solely on the equipment and gadget you must understand how these equipment and gadgets work and how they could benefit you.

A good example is, you definitely cannot put a Humidifier in your Swiftlet farms just because you want to increase the humidity. You must also understand how it works, the time to operate, how long should it operate, where it should be placed, how many units is sufficient, what type of humidifiers should be used and so on.

Even you have an automatic controller (Hygrostat) for the humidifier it still wouldn’t solve the humidity problem for long run. I have come across Swiftlet farms with low Rh and the owners install many humidifiers to get the RH reading up. He discovered that he managed to get the RH reading at 85% but the Humidifiers keep running most of the time even with the automatic controller. The only time it stops is when it rain.

This clearly indicated that the Humidifiers have not been fully utilized for the purpose of humidity but as a suppression to compensate for wet vapor that had escaped from the Swiftlet farm. So the main problem is not humidity but Ventilation control. The solution is to control and manage the Ventilation System of the Swiftlet farm first.

That is the problem with many Swiftlet farmers they think Swiftlet farming equipment and gadgets are the ultimate solution to their farms’ problems. That is a wrong perception. The equipment and gadgets are of no benefits if you don’t know how to make use of it. The purpose of the humidifier is beyond humidity. It makes better quality nests, birds feel better and produce higher volume of saliva, etc

Now you could clearly understand why you have installed many equipment and gadgets and yet birds still don’t build nests.

Humidity is only a small part in the process of building a good Swiftlet farm. There are hundreds of other things like light density, temperature, aroma, sound, etc which we need to understand before we could fully utilize them.

So isn’t Swiftlet farming interesting?

The learning never ends.

Good Swiftlet Farming All!