Why So many People Don't Know How to Design Swiftlets Farm

"Why So many People Don't Know How to Design Swiftlets Farm". This keeps pondering in my head.

It seems most Swiftlets farm are designed or planned to fail. What really worries me are the poor owner of  those failed Swiftlets farms. What are they to do. After so many years of writing, providing free information on my blog, (and there are tons of information available in the web) it is sad to see people still building failed Swiftlets farms everyday. 

Many of my readers had built successful Swiftlets farms after learning from my blog I don't see why others couldn't.

( The town of Termeloh)

I was invited to visit few Swiftlets farms in Termeloh. This particular one is interesting which the design is so  bad that many Swiftlet died inside. I would like to point out the mistakes here and share with all.

The owner has recently taken back this Swiftlets farm to manage it himself after he runs out of patience with the so called partner cum consultant (JV). 

A 3 storey Swiftlets farm, located in a Prime Bird Zone. Many would dream to have a Swiftlets farm built here. This area is surrounded with many successful Swiftlets farms which some reaching few thousands nests. Having a Swiftlets farm here is already half way to success..but not for this particular Swiftlets farm.

( Dead Swiftlets everywhere)

( Dead Swiftlets everywhere)

The most shocking thing was , there are dead Swiftlets everywhere. The moment I opened the door dead birds are at my feet. By looking at the size and color I knew they are of young birds. These are the Young Swiftlets that just learned to fly. 

The owner has no idea why there were so many dead birds in his Swiftlet farm. Every visits he found dead birds. He cleared them. It is a routine job. It just occurs again and again.

He suspected predators, Owls , Rat, Gecko and so on, but so far he didn't catch any of them.

Would you allow this to happen to your Swiftlets farm? Can't blame the owner as he couldn't  figure it out why. The closest he could get was to blame it on Predators. 

Dead birds are everywhere, at the Nesting area, the Inter hole and particularly the ground floor. I noticed that most dead birds are at the darker area of the Swiftlet farm.

This hinted to me that they can't find their way out. Young Swiftlets that just learned to fly do not have the ability to navigate in total darkness. They have yet to develop the clicking sound (Echolocation) to navigate out from the dark area.

These young birds relied very much on the glare of light to lead them to fly around. I am sure many of you had encountered incident where birds charging to your headlight or flash light when you are inside the farm.

This evidently shows light density is vital for the survival of young birds. If they can't find their way around or back to their nests they will die of exhaustion of flying.

So when a person tells you that it is compulsory to have your Swiftlet farm the darker the better, you know how well he knows Swiftlet farming. (Knowledge near zero).

Often these are the people who had being  building Swiftlet farms for people for many years. This is why the successful rate of Swiftlet farming remains at 20%. ( 80% failed).

The design of a Swiftlet farm encapsulate everything, from control of light density to easy maneuvering for young birds. It is one of the most important aspect of  successful Swiftlet farming

For this particular Swiftlet farm, the internal  Design failed. I don't agree with having a gap at the lower part of the partition though I had seen many Swiftlets farms adopting such design. It causes more harm than good.

They claimed, it is for Movement of air and Ventilation purposes. Isn't we have the Ventilation holes to do that. Secondly we don't encourage Movement of Air inside Swiftlet farm. So isn't this contradicting?

The partitioning was totally disastrous. It was made to kill the birds. See a Picture A. Young birds are attracted to light (glare). To them it leads the way to Entrance hole. They dived down to the glare and hit the floor. Often they won't die instantly. It takes days to succumb to injuries, some of them still could fly around and die at other places. Therefore dead birds could be found all over the farm.

This design clearly shown the lack of understanding of Swiftlets flying behavior.  Some might argue that there are successful farms with such design especially in Setiawan and Kelantan. Well that is true. Those Swiftlet farms were built 15-30 years ago when there were no competition. Perhaps just a few Swiftlet farms in the whole town. Swiftlets were plentiful then. The dead Swiftlets were small percentage compared to the huge increase of Swiftlet population. So the dead ones consider nothing.

Now there are so many Swiftlets farms and the Swiftlet population is reducing, every each dead Swiftlet would have an impact on the future  of a Swiftlets farm.

(One of the young birds trying to fly after hitting the ground. It will soon die). 

This Swiftlet farm has a strange smell. The owner complained, there are many and Swiftlets playing everyday. They came from nearby Swiftlet farms but they don't stay. He said, people wouldn't believe him that his farm is not doing well. Judging from the number of birds playing outside I agree with him.

The smell insidewas strange. It smells like a hair saloon. A pungent smell, a cross smell of some spices. What kind of Aroma  is he using? How can this smell be in a Swiftlet farm. I am sure the Swiftlets hate it that is why there are not staying. I wouldn't want to comment on this further. I had explained to the owner. He knows what I am saying. 

There large number of Swiftlets come to his Swiftlets farm everyday but only few would stay. Look at the Swiftlets dropping marks. All these are from young Swiftlets. They are from other people's farms. If  this Swiftlets farm could capture 30% of it he would be laughing to the bank. Unfortunately that was not  the case. Not only this Swiftlet farm is unable to capture other people's birds, it can't even retain its own young birds.

Can you count the tweeter? Obviously yes. I guess each floor has less than 20 tweeters. The owner replied, " Sifu said no need so many tweeters one."  

If this guy can be a Sifu with such skill then all who read my blog could be Sifu too. Am I right?.

It should have at least 80 tweeters. Strategically placing them at the corners as Swiftlets like building nests at corners.

The pictures show most  tweeters ( below or next ) have nests near them. It indicates the important of Internal sound in a Swiftlet farm. This is very basic of Swiftlet farming but it is not being  practiced in this Swiftlet farm..

There are tonnes of problems in this Swiftlet farm. I explained every each and  single problem to the owner. I told him how these problems arise and how they can be solved. It is a one to one guide making sure he understand it so that he could manage it himself without relying on others.

As we all could see from the pictures, we can not deny that people with such skill are  building Swiftlet farms for others and claimed to be Sifu.

Good Swiftlet Farming All!

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