Forgive my ignorance on the topic of swiftlet farming as i have only read this section in lowyat only today.Since this topic has reach V.3 and most of the info here is basically very technical and none of the basic information is given (maybe there is but too much post to cover) ,I would just like to know how to determine an area like for example and agriculture land has potential for swiftlet farming?

It is to my understanding that we do some sort of a calling test to check whether the area has swiftlet before we decide to build the BH am i correct? I have an unuse agriculture land that i would like to turn into a swiftlet farm and on that farm i have an unuse double story house that may be converted into the BH.But how do i get started?
I am planning to get the book by dr christopher lim titled Make Millions from swiflet farming.ANyways is that book any good ?

Dr Chris's book is a good basic reference book for newbie to start off with but definitely not for advanced learner. Can get it at MPH for RM80.

Hi WW, thanks for your frank answer.

My BH is 100ft x 22ft. May be described as 5 sections of 20ft x 22ft per floor, of 3 stories. Alignment is East to West with in out holes at East, North and South on 4th flr. 'dog Kennel'. Internal well of 20ft x 20ft from top to bottom in the central section.

The strange thing is that on the top floor, in the East wing consisting of 2 sections, 20ft x 22ft, only the section nearest to the central well is occupied whereas the last section to the East does not even have spots where the birds rest or shit. This un occupied area is darker than all other areas on the same floor, with the opposite, west, section, bright enough to read large print from a newspaper. Wall temperature at this un occupied area remains a max. of 30c. and min of 27c. with humidity from electronically controlled humidified set at 80% Rh.

All other areas and floors are well occupied and visited by the birds.

Please note that the birds are building nests in all the brighter areas of this floor !

All the floors below are darker than this unoccupied section but then again, nests are being built almost everywhere.

I am not particularly worried about this situation, this is an excercise whilst waiting for YB Chow Kon Yeow to finalise the Guidelines for Penang. I hope it will be interesting for forumers. Also I have not tried out my solution as I think I'll leave it to test perfumes, potions etc.

If this is actively discussed, I'll then report on all results, which hopefully will guide everyone in one way or another.

Not enough of information are provided but maybe someone here may have the reason why..........

I rather talk about experiences and history ( I wish others will share their experience and history with me as I also can learn from their success and failure).

Once, I was offer 2 3S.BHs ( both 2 years old) and both at almost the same price. The difference is that A BH has 58 nests and only 10 nests at the upper floor but B BH has 45 nests but only 4 nests at the lower floor...........I bought B at a slightly more expensive price as I believe that A BH is normal as so there is nothing much I can do to greatly increase the nests but B BH has some problem as the birds prefer upper floor which has the most problem..........so there must be something at the lower floor that discourage the birds to stay and yet they stay at the upper floor......meaning that the BH has great potential and this I like the best. No point wasting my time over A as the increment may not be to my liking as surely enough, by simple modification, I manege to increase the birds population to afew hundreds in a year time...........God of swiftlets must be good to me.

The very reason that I bought was because the area is a core area having so many BHs with over thousand nests and these 2 BHs failed......since one is normal in the distribution of nests but the second one must got potential according my thinking. Maybe, I am just lucky or am I right????

So, I wonder many must have failed BHs and hopefully share their experience with us so that we won't fall into the same situation. Just that we hope that we will not fall into the same trap and only you can help us..........like TF asked if any has used portion and which portion has proven to work cos the photo at their site may not be the truth but we trust our friends here more.

Once a friend did asked me to buy for him some portion and the first portion was good according to my friend but the repeated order by him bring no result at all and he though that I must have given him imitation portion as each 4 little cost afew hundreds; I never would want to buy it myself at the price but I have been accused of cheating my friend cos the smell also different lah.......so is this Malaysian way of doing buz .......first time OK and second time rubbish !!!! just like imported China products if you have heard of it.


Or anyone used duck eggs or seaweed ...hahaha and maybe work ...... tell us only if it doesn't work cos it would be a waste to try again...

Hi West Wing, I have a BH with the same situation like yours (upper floor bird stay first and ground floor only few) and this BH almost 1 and a half years old. Only recently I notice more bird staying and nesting but still they prefer upper floor. Can it be the upper floor air flow much better but I know the lower floor is much cooler. Inside temperature on 3rd floor around 29C and Humidity around 88%. Anyway to increase the lower floor bird staying or can it be the well to lower floor too narrow.
I still haven't try duck egg but can you tell me how to used it. Thanks a million.

Oh! the duck eggs and seaweed are only jokes because long ago someone did mentioned in his site on them so I mentioned it as a joke lah.
Maybe by slim changes that it may work but I rather not try and if anyone has tried and I believe that someone must has tried it, do let us know the outcome.

I have no problem with upper floor got nests and lower floor no nest as I find it that lower floor is easier to manage than top floor (after the first teething year) but then the birds will definitely visit and stay in upper floor first (@ suitable location) in most of the cases and if you do your BH well, the lower floor will very soon be more than the upper floor unless your upper floor is manage perfectly well. If you have birds staying at the upper floor first, that's normal in most of all cases but in a long run, the lower floor will present a better living environment and condition to the birds and in some beautiful managed BHs, we see equally amount of birds staying.

Most of the problem that the bird did not visit the lower floor (from my experience only),

1. Your entrance to lower floor is not properly done in most of the cases that I have seen.
2. There is no sound attracting them to the lower floor.

Lower floor has lesser problem than the top floor which many here will tell you that any one of the basic requirements is difficult to solve at top floor. One of the top floor difficulties is to manage the ceiling heat wave and you may try to touch the ceiling in the hot afternoon and if you experience hot then how do you expect the birds to stay as instead of chicks, you got hard boiled eggs...hahahaha......so, remember that the first sign of birds staying is the top floor( in most of the cases) and at the better location of the top floor....that's my finding but hope to hear other comments on it.

My experience to share @ forum with bird loving friends and wish to learn from them in the art of providing sanctuaries to swiftl

tuckfook,
Please do report your actions and results.
Any experimentation is interesting and a learning of either something to try out or something to avoid doing.


This post has been edited by Cergau: Sep 9 2010, 01:43 PM

Oyes, forget to inform you that the recent posting were mostly concerned Town BHs and have little bearing on the agriculture land as these Agri BHs are build just for the birds and these BHs normally have water pool to cool the upper floor and some make use of insulation materials to do the same. Converting an old town building upper floor to suit swiftlets requirement take alot of cash but don't worry, with cash provided at the lower floor will soon be sufficient to carry out renovation for the top floor like some of my friends; building another layer of roofing with insulating material above the old roof to isolated heat costing something like 30 -50K....and also beautifying the roof's appearance of the buildings.

Meaning that your top floor become your second floor taking into consideration of the upper insulation partition............excuse me....

Just sharing my experience.
I didn't apply any perfume, aroma thingy whatsoever for my BH in agri land from day one. I placed only 1 gunny sack of bird's droppings each floor. My birds were greeted with strong cement smell at the beginning. Nevertheless, I got my first nest in 4 moths and the bird's population has been growing ever since.

This post has been edited by aeiou228: Sep 9 2010, 08:31 PM

Good for you and I like you always like to use the original ones and may I add, put in some water and stir well. With this method, you will get very good perfume ( ammonia gas) and make very sure that you don't inhale the bag of ammonia gas as this is a KO gas......I almost got KO with this gas. Also, use new bird fertilizer ( gentleman word for it) and experience the sensation smell of CD no.10.

Newbiz, try it and I assured you money back guarantee lah.........cover up all unwanted smell but then, new guys in town said that this is no a clean and healthy way of BH management so what to do, my friend?

My house on agri land also used no special perfume when I first started.

I used 100kgs of Ammonium Bicarbonate, got it cheap as it was the tainted China stuff that the Govt had banned because of some poisonous additive. I also had about 100kgs of bird shit which was kept wet in big basins.

First markings in about 1 month and complete nest in 2-3 mths. About 100+ nests by 12 mths and 200+ nests in 24 mths.

The strange thing is that the area I describe is still barren !

So, it'll be a good place for me to experiment !

This post has been edited by tuckfook: Sep 9 2010, 09:40 PM

Thank you West Wing for your personal insight of the matter. Well I'm from Kota Kinabalu and my area here only have 3 BH (that I know of) since here there is not that many ppl involve in this field and information on this subject matter is few and far between this forum is my main source of information. I know some ppl will not share important information freely but I have found this forum to be very useful. As for the duck eggs I have heard ppl using it here but I really have no detail. They said its good for increasing bird staying but I don't know maybe need to try and break a fresh duck egg and smell the aroma first. I do have some concern regarding the wiring of the BH tweeter. Since my BH project is a DIY (I don't have big budget) and all the wiring electrical and sound I do myself I was wondering any idea how many ppl used 4ohms or 8ohms wiring technique for the speaker. I have been using 4ohms so far but it seem like my external sound fail very quickly. Sound started to deteriorate from only few months of uses. I'm also planning to use a low powered PC for changing the sound from morning to evening (it will save me some money from buying few amps and player and timer) I just want to get your respond from this. Thanks again.

Piezo tweeters are neither 4 or 8 ohms. They should be in the region of Kohms. All tweeters are wired in parallel and never series.

I don't think anybody uses coil type tweeters anymore as these are prone to failure due to the environment. Coil type are usually used in high end hi fi equipment and tend to be very expensive.

Piezo tweeters are cheap and last a lot longer as well as being good enough for our purposes.

Google for more information on different types of tweeters

Today, I just replaced 2 external tweeters due to rain water damaged. Can any sifu here share tips on how to prevent this problem ?

My Ext tweeters were installed on the inside wall at the entrance hole window. If heavy rain, the tweeters will all get wet. Will covering it with a plastic mesh help to filter out the water ?

Depending on type or design, usually a .25" hole at the bottom will drain the water entering the tweeter. After making the hole, spray the tweeter dome with a thin coat of clear lacquer.

If you are using the tweeter with a coil in the back, this coil is usually just to filter out the lower frequencies. Just spray everything with a coat of clear lacquer.

The Piezo crystal is waterproof but the soldered contacts usually corrode.Again clear lacquer helps extend life. Modern domes are plastic but some in the market is paper. Again clear lacquer will make it last for years.

Water will make the tweeter inefficient but when it dries out it returns to normal.

Wow !! Good stuff tuckfook. Will give it a try. Thank you !

Yes very useful information indeed. So my guess is it don't matter if it's 4 or 8 Ohms tweeter and those piezo tweeter is good enough. I do have piezo tweeter install inside the BH but for external I have been using coil (motorola) tweeter. Those coil tweeter have a much more natural sound when sound volume is increase. What if I wired 2 tweeters in series to make the tweeter 8ohms like that the amplifier will not be working too hard sending higher amps to the speaker. Any comment on this is very welcome. Thanks for the valuable information tuckfook.

This post has been edited by mfyapp: Sep 11 2010, 06:18 AM

Hi Tuckfook,

Since no one answers, I like to give it a try.
I think that section specially the east wall and the ceiling might be too hot.
You can try touch it with your hand on a sunny day.

This incident also happened to my friend's BH.
Since it passed summer now. He just placed his two humidifiers closer to the east wall.
So the mist will wet and cool down the wall a bit.
But before next summer, he will put a more permanent shade outside the wall.

Just a newbie's opinion.

This post has been edited by Tweeter: Sep 11 2010, 12:18 PM

Thanks for your response.

In fact the west side ceiling is actually always hotter than the east side ceiling and yet there are nests on the west side.

On the east side, most of the ceiling is about the same temperature but the sections near the east wall remains empty but the sections near the well(centre ) is occupied by many birds..

I'll monitor the temperatures more closely to see if there is a difference at the nesting planks.

---

Added on September 11, 2010, 11:25 pmUnfortunately you cannot mix tweeters of different resistance ie. ohms.

If you drive a normal piezo tweeter in parallel with a coil tweeter of 8 ohms, you will get no sound from the piezo tweeter as all the current will be used to drive the 8 ohm component.

If you try to drive many 8 ohm tweeters in parallel, you'll likely blow your amp.

If you try drive many 8 ohm tweeters in series, you will get no sound. 8 ohms speakers need high currents to function but produce good bass sound.

Not all coil tweeters are 4 or 8 ohms. Coils used in piezo tweeters are actually "crossovers" used to divert all the energy into the higher frequencies meant for the tweeter.

Look at the tweeter specs. carefully and it'll state the Ohms rating.

The beauty of high ohms piezo tweeters is that we can wire hundreds of tweeters together in parallel and get sound from them without blowing the amp. Why ?? the total resistance of components in parallel is found by adding the reciprocal of each component eg. 1/r1 + 1/r2 +1/r3 = 1/R where R is the total resistance of the components r1, r2, r3 in parallel.
so if r1=r2=r3=8 then 1/8 +1/8 +1/8 = 3/8 = 0.375 or approx. 1/3 so the total ohms will be approx. 3 ohms which will readily blow the amp up.

With a piezo which is about 4000 ohms 1/4000 + 1/4000 +1/4000 .......(for 100pcs) = 100/4000 = 1/40 so the total ohms for 100 pcs of tweeters of 4000 ohms impedance in parallel will be 40ohms. Most amps are designed to drive at a max current through 4 or 8 ohms so 40 ohms in this case will be the safe. Piezos need very little current to function.

There are many sorts of Motorola tweeters and some are actually coil driven, ie they rely on magnetism created by the coil when the amp current flows through it. Piezos are different in that the voltage across 2 crystal plates cause the plates to vibrate according to the voltage fluctuations. You will find no magnet in a piezo tweeter. A coil driven tweeter will not last long in a BH.

Hope that helps.





This post has been edited by tuckfook: Sep 11 2010, 11:25 PM

Let me guess....

Difficult flying path to the east wing ? ( can be monitor by CCTV)
Plank got mold ?