This is an email I had received a
couple of days ago from one of my readers. He had wanted to venture into
Swiftlet farming, which I suppose a low cost Swiftlet farm. The catchy word was
“ Test Out”.
Please read below:
Dear James,
I read with great interest your blogs
and experience on swiftlet farming. I have a very small piece of farmland
in P..... which I am interested in building a swiftlet farm. However,
this is new to me and I am not sure if a swiftlet farm would work on my
farm.
Would you be able to help me on
this? I would definitely need your help to supply the equipment required
to set up and also your advice on constructing a cheap farm to test out and see
if the place is able to attract swiftlets.
Best regards
Mr.S...........
There are no cheap or expensive
Swiftlet farms. But there are successful and failed Swiftlet farms.
Swiftlets couldn’t bother how cheap or
expensive a farm is. Most importantly, how it is being designed to suit them.
Definitely no “Test Out”. Do the best
or don’t do it at all.
The temperature and the humidity in a
Swiftlet farm (internal environment) has to be at an appropriate level where
Swiftlets feel comfortable. With this criteria met they will stay and build
nests. ( subjected to a good design” Flying path”)
Often good Internal environment
control has very much to do with the material of the walls and the ceiling of
the farm. Double layered bricks, a thick ceiling with good ventilation,etc. All
these involve costs. There are no short cuts and they are not cheap.
If you want to test out on the cheap
Swiftlet farms, my advice would be to better save the money for a vacation or
on some hobbies. Often cheap Swiftlet
farms use least possible material to build and most are without insulation
materials.
There are thousands of failed cheap
Swiftlet farms out there. If you unfamiliar with this industry, you may fail to
notice it.
Many still think that as long there is
an Entrance hole, as long there are some tweeters fixed at the entrance hole,
or as long there are nesting planks and so on, birds will come to stay and
build nests. They had perceived it wrongly.
Often to save cost most would cut down
on materials during construction. Single layered bricks, using zinc sheets as
walls, asbestos and Styrofoam (sandwich), cheap 3rd graded Meranti, etc. You
name it. They do it for the sake of cost saving and totally ignore the bird's requirements.
Their main objective is cost saving
and they have completely oblivious to what they are doing.
This is only the material and
construction part, what about the
design. Bear in mind, even when a Swiftlet farm is constructed to good internal
environmental control, if the design doesn’t suit them, they may not stay and
build nests. What does the phrase “ Good Design” means?
It encompasses “ Flying Path”. A
degree and length needed for a bird to fly freely without any difficulty. Also,
the adequate size of the Entrance hole and the size of each nesting and roving
areas so that birds could easily access
these areas.
All aspects must come together, from
designing to materials and construction. Obviously the cost of building a
Swiftlet farm is important, but they are secondary. ( Other people may think
differently and they have all the rights to differ.)
Would you want to own a cheaply built
low cost failed Swiftlet farm or a reasonably priced successful Swiftlet farm?
Well, the decision is yours.
Good Swiftlet farming All!
