Thursday, December 31, 2009

Finally the Wall is Down

Yes! Finally the wall is down. Another partition is setup to create a roving area of 10'x13'.

The birds can fly into my BH easily now. Another concern is the BH is a bit brighter than before. Will see whether need additional partition to cover the light.

"You are not fail if you don't give up". Wish me good luck in 2010.


Saturday, December 26, 2009

WHAT I WOULD LIKE FOR CHRISTMAS?

By Mr Fre..

The answer is so simple for a swiftlet farmer; I would like a large swarm of swiftlets to populate my farm and produce bountiful crop of nests! Aside from that saliva inducing dream of a farm densely populated by swiftlets, I would like to have a pair of night vision goggles. Why? Because then I can then steal into the farm at night after all the swiftlets had returned home and do a bit of field research and observation. While one can install CCTV connected to a digital video recorder; yet it is much better to be able to observe the behaviors of the birds first hand. With the aid of the night vision google; I can walk around to observe areas where there are nests and birds. I think one can gain much insights from closely examine the life and activities of the birds, from the chicks to the matured birds. It would be a good idea to wear dark clothings so that I can be rendered “invisible” under the cover of utter darkness. However, a pair of night vision goggles does not come cheap as even the cheaper models cost over one thousand ringgit. I think it is not worthwhile to purchase such a tool. Perhaps I can try my luck by emailing a letter to Santa Clause telling him how good I have been throughout the year; and I wonder if by chance he has some stockpile of night vision goggles among his goodies…. Maybe he can spare me a pair….

Monday, December 21, 2009

Renovation on my BH

After few round of discussion with my friend, I decided to do the last major renovation for my BH. Below picture is my current BH. The problem is the roving area is very small, only 6.5x10 feet. My consultant feel that the roving area is not necessary. After checking the CCD camera, a lot of birds do not dare to fly in.


To solve the problem, we agreed to hack the wall at the roving area and make the size increase to 12x10 feet. With the bigger roving area, the birds will have more room to maneuver and hopefully will venture inside the nesting area.


Wish me good luck!!!

Sunday, December 6, 2009

BH Update after 13 months

I did not go back to check my BH last month. So I asked my brother to help me. Only 37 nests after 13 months. I consider my BH below average. About 30% of the nests have egg but only 1 new nest for this month. Really can't understand.

After open the roof to ease the birds flying in, some how it does not help much. I asked one of my friend opinion. He told me that there are a few sub-species AF, some build nests all the year and some only make nest at certain session. So, he suspect mine is belong to the later one.

Anyway, I believe there are few more things that I can try out. I will spend more time at my BH in the coming visit to implement those changes.

For those people in the same situation as me, remember "You are not consider failures if you never give up". Keep trying...Good Luck.

Sunday, November 22, 2009

New Hexagon Position

Below is the picture before I open the roof. You can image that when birds playing at the hexagon, they cannot "see" the inner entrance hole. When they fly in, they need to make "U-turn" to go in to nesting area. Some friends advice me that the flying path is not smooth.

As mentioned in my old article, I finally opened the roof top to allow smooth flying path for birds fly in more direction. But I have no time to relocate my hexagon position until last week.

The pictures below show the new Hexagon position. I believe this new position allot birds to play and at the same time "see" the entrance hole. When I removed the Hexagon and did a check, I found out that 2 out of 6 tweeters no longer working. I replaced them before fixed the Hexagon at new location.

As the external tweeters and Hexagon expose to sun and rain, they are tend to break down easier than your internal tweeters. You need to make sure you do a regular check on those tweeters. Remember, those tweeters help you to "publish" your BH to new birds. So, you need to make sure they working all the time.
The next thing on my "To Do list" is to fix some "Owl" preventive tool to prevent the owl to go into my BH.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Partition

We all know that partition is used to block the light from entrance hole as well as use it as a territories for different colony of birds. I always heard people said if your partition is not design properly, you will block the birds flying path. So, what is the best way to design a partition.

For the information that I gathered, it seem like Top down partition is the safer method to use if you are not sure whether the partition will block the birds flying path or not. For those expert they can use the full partition as it will block all the light.

For me, to play safe, I use Top down partition method. The pictures below used sand board.

I also tried a cheaper method by using black plastic card board. You can get it at the stationary store easily. The good thing is if the birds accidentally hit the board, it is soft and would not hurt the birds. You may laugh, but according to my friend, he really heard a lot of "stupid" birds hit the partition. So he changed the hard partition to "soft" type partition.


Thursday, November 5, 2009

Legend for the Color Dot


Some people asked me what is the meaning for those color dot in my earlier post. Well, it is a way for me to keep track my nests count and understand better the nest cycle.

Orange Dot - Existing nest
Blue Dot - New nest
Purple Dot - Nest with birds
Green Dot - Nest with eggs
Red Dot - No Nest yet after harvest

There are few observation that I can made:-
1. The birds prefer to build nest at the end of my BH
2. New colony start at the middle of the BH (3 new nests)
3. More birds prefer left hand side than right hand side. Need to check why?
4. There are few nests after harvested, birds never come back. Need to understand why?

With this record, it become very clear that some of your Bird prefer to build nest at certain area. If you can find out the reason, you can duplicate the same conditions at the other parts of your BH.

In the swiftlet industrial, there are a lot of things that "sifu" don't tell you. Sometimes those things that they told you might not apply to your BH. You need to observe yourself. Who know, you may find the "Key" to your success.

Hope everyone can find the "key" to your success.

Monday, November 2, 2009

BH Update after 12 months


It has been some times I never go back and visit my BH. My kid exam is coming, so cannot go back to my home town. That is also why I seldom update my blog now a day.

Last week, I asked my brother help me to take a look my BH and do a bird nests count. There are about 35 nests now. 5 news nest compare to last month. Although the growth is not within my expectation, it is still better than no growth.

I recently found how to modify the cheap ultrasonic humidifier such that the water can supply to humidifier 24 hours a day. I will get a few humidifiers to test during my next visit. Hope it will solve my BH wet issue and improve the micro condition and quality of my nest.

Monday, October 26, 2009

Different Types of Wires

From Mr Fre about the wires selection. Just to add on, from what I learn from Pak Hen seminar. Recommend min strand count is 50 and best is 80 counts.

There are different types of wires that are used in swiftlet farms. In the photo, one can see four types. The left hand side are the better quality and more expensive wires whereas the ones on the right are lesser quality and cheaper wires. Novice farmers often had no idea about the wiring in their farms unless they are well verse in audio equipments or like to play around with stereo or home theater systems.

Sometimes, contractors would simply use the lower right hand type of wire to rig the sound system as this is the cheapest wire. It is the cheapest because it has very little strands of copper in it. It is white in color with a blue line indicating the positive polarity.

The good point is that this wiring is very thin and do not take up much space around the planking and it is very easy to strip away the plastic cover to expose the copper strands to make connections. Actually, it is usable but not really advisable to do so if given a choice.

The upper right hand type which is in red rubber coating is slightly better as its silicone coating provides durable protection to the copper strands which is probably slightly more than the cheap white color wire. The color is red on both lines but one side is darker than the other; so one would need to choose whether to use the darker line or the lighter color line to be the positive line. I choose the darker red line to be the positive line. However, if you use it outdoor, the color will be faded by the sun so that you will not know which is positive and negative anymore. Then you need to trace the line back to the source to check. If you like, you can use a marker pen to mark the positive line. While the silicone cover provides good insulation for the wires, it can be hard to cut the covering away to expose the copper strands to make connections especially if one use a plain scissor to do the job; if you have a stripper, it would be much easier.

The lower left hand is a good quality stereo wire with strong jacket covering and one of the line has a clear blue line indicating it be use for the positive polarity. The many strands of coppers make a thick wiring good for sound transmission. The ray of the sun also will not burn off the blue line indicating positive polarity but the silicone cover tend to become soft when exposed to the sun as when we used it around the open roof area.

The upper left hand blue color wiring with a red line running on one line (which I use to indicate negative polarity) is a very good choice for use in swiftlet farm as it is thick with strands of coppers and the blue jacket is easily cut and strip away to make connections. It is probably slightly more expensive than the stereo wire but a good choice for use in a bird farm.

If you are to build a farm today, I would suggest you use the more expensive wires as the more strands of copper should help to deliver better quality of sound; especially if you plan to operate the farm for not just a few years but decades. I think it is very much a case of false economy to save pittances on wiring unless you ignorantly allow a contractor to cut corners and to make use of the cheap white wires. Another thing to consider is to make use of different color wires for different purpose, such as the blue ones for external sounds and the stereo wires for internal sound so that you can tell them apart at a glance.

Thursday, October 22, 2009

SAM and Esther

Very touching video. Recommend to show you to your kids how lucky they are.


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