Swiftlet Farming is one of the most potential Agro related business. This Swiftlet Farming Blog was created to reveal and expose the insight of Swiftlets farming. Swiftlets farming is viable in Malaysia, Vietnam, Thailand, Indonesia,Cambodia,Myanmar, Laos, Philippine and Brunei
I was asked to give some opinions about this newly built Swiftlet farm which is located at the East Coast. It was built by a Swiftlet contractor who is a good friend of the owner. They had installed the Nesting plank few days ago. It is almost completed except the sound system and some final touch up.
One of the partners of this Swiftlet farm sensed something not right and asked me for second opinion. What more could I say? It is already done...completed full stop.
I wouldn't want to disappoint them as they have spent so much money and having high hope on this newly built Swiftlet farm. But the truth is hard to swallow. Some how they have to face it. It is better to face it now rather than few years later.
There many errors in the Internal and External design of this farm. To be fair to the owner I can't reveal too much. I could only show some of the mistakes made and hope that you all learn something.
Obstructing the Flying Path
Here are the few things that I had pointed out to him. Firstly, why do you need to build a staircase right at the middle of the roving area? As I had mentioned before a staircase is for us (human) to access to the farm, not for birds. It should be built separately away from the roving. If possible it should be hidden. Those who had followed my articles know what I am talking about.
The staircase is obstructing the flying path of the birds. As the result,
1) Birds refuse to fly deeper into the nesting 2) It would take a longer time for birds to stay 3) Longer period for adaptation as birds avoid the staircase before they could smoothly glide to the nesting area. 4) etc..many more.
Predators and Its Ambush areas
Safety is priority but, there are too many hand grills and barricades and there are too high. The hand grills are the best places for predators (Owls, Hawks,etc) to perch for ambush. Such design made it easy for the predator to ambush from the second Entrance hole. Now you know why some Swiftlet farms couldn't attract birds to stay and could only yield few nests after many years.
For your information there are many ways to build the barricades ( for safety). There are many other materials could be used.( not necessarily to use round steel tube).
Light Density Control
The bright glaring light from the PVC elbows create confusion, young birds would hit the PVC vent holes and die as they thought the light would lead them to the Entrance hole. All PVC vents should be covered with a 1-3 ft PVC tube. Young birds tend to use light as their guide of direction this evidence could be observed when we do harvesting of nests by wearing head lights. The birds tend to hit our head lights and faces. It indicated that young birds flying directions are influenced by light.
Vent-Hole Control
It is obvious that this Swiftlet farm has too many Vent-holes. If it is not controlled properly the drought air (Hot Air) from outside could easily flow into the farm making the whole internal environment unstable. Often, the number of Vent-hole was influence by following other people farm's design blindly. What is the exact or ideal numbers of Vent- hole needed? I guess no one has ever answered this question. The answer is subjected to the design of the farm ( How many storey?. Open roof or Dog Kennel design) . Also subjected to the size of the entrance hole, second entrance hole, etc. All these influence the number of Vent-Hole needed ( will explain in detail when we meet face to face).
The owner is truly a Swiftlet farming enthusiast. They really have the patience to drill every single hole onto the PVC tube. They don't need to do that as there are many ready made Vent Hole covers in the market now.
Secondly, what's the point of painting the whole Entrance and Roving area with black paint while the glare light from the Vent-Hole will anyway brighten the whole nesting area. Like I had always said, you need skill, knowledge and experience to notice this.
Here are just some of the many problems that I have pointed out. I hope they will learn from their mistakes, often this kind of mistakes are too costly.
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