Thanks to all fellow contributors of thoughts at our V3 thread and again it's come to maximum posts of 2500. Hope this V4 thread continue to be one of the most read swiftlet discussion forum around. The forum to discuss and alert all fellow ranchers about any problem arise in this industry. Sharing of DIY techniques, methods are welcome.


Some links regarding swiftlet farming:
Kong Heng Swiftlets Equipments Supply
Nest Tech Equipment Technology
Ming-Yan.com
Nest Talk Consultation Service
Crystal Swiftlets
Klub Peternak Walet - Indonesia
aerodramus.com
Yahoo Discussion Group

Blogs regarding swiftlet farming:
CATATAN HENMILIA

Swiftlet Farming : an Addictive Hobby & Multi-Million Dollar Business
Johan Walet.com
GMYS ENTERPRISE-Menjual Peralatan Memancing Burung Walet
Swallow Bird Nest Indonesia
燕农天地与燕屋管理 (swiftlet farming & management)
World of Swiftlet Farming

Proceeded from V1 http://forum.lowyat.net/topic/431781/+2420

V2 Thread

V3 Thread

Hope v4 brings good price to bn.

would like to get some opinion about the aroma. how effective of the product and can we home made it?

Our Official keeper doing a good job. V4 walets, be patient. Recovery is on the horizon.

to WW

You mean your BH nests increase from 2600nests to 4k nests in less than a year?

then mean how old ur BH that time ad????8 years???=)

thanks

and the first year ,how many nest in that BH??

Littlebird,

You have to work hard and dig it up from the forum. It has been widely discussed before.

Wau, V R now in V4 and still running hot and together we may make a record....SeeSeng must be proud.

4K nests in over 4 years, if I believe that I could do it then, would I sold it so cheaply, but that's the good old days. And it's over 6 months and not a year! I was also surprised what then it's too late and did you know after afew years, how many nests were in the BH which was sold again to another buyer and this time, it was sold for over 5.5M and the BH had over 10K nests according to the seller then.

Now, I think that the amount may drop some as the new owners modified the BH according to their way and from friends that they harvest the BH monthly. Why modified when the good was running as I always preached and his loss maybe my gain as one of my BHs is close to this BH and I shall be expecting better harvest next time around; thanks to this Chai Sen Yeah.

That's why I always said that when you care for the birds, the birds will remember you and always return to your BH, their home and with them, their descendants and even to great great grand swiftlets, relatives and friends........

i remember i saw some post in V3 regarding using the poly-foam as fake nest to help the young bird build up their nest. i cant find it now, can anyone tell me how to stick the poly-foam?

In the good old days, the doubling of nests in 12 months is common. Even tripling has been recorded. Hence, to grow from 2.6k to 4k nests in 8 months is not surprising. Another 12 months, it would be 8k. In fact, it should be expected of very successful BHs. In fact, it only needs 30% of young birds to return and with 3 breeding seasons a years, doubling is achieved.

The situation now is very different due to the proliferation of new BHs. The young birds have a lot of choices. If 10% of the young birds come back to your BH, you should record 30% growth a year and be very very happy with it.

Location, good calling sound and good house design is the key.

This post has been edited by coolandy: Nov 23 2011, 05:25 PM

Can't believe we reached V4 already, keep up the good work everybody!

Something off topic, BH horror stories, any sifus here have any stories in BH to share?

There's this BH of mine on the East coast, whenever I go inside it just gives me the creeps, I don't know why. I can go to all my other BHs in the dark with no problem but this particular BH just gets me thinking about stuff every time I go inside.

I have to turn on all the lights (not a lot) and get out quick, I guess I'm paranoid

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Added on November 23, 2011, 8:56 pmWhy go through all the trouble having to cut some foam? For new BHs you can buy those plastic fake nests and put some on every floor.

Some birds will choose to use the fake nest, after they breed once you can remove the fake nest and hope they come back and make a REAL nest the next time they breed.

This post has been edited by northface: Nov 23 2011, 08:56 PM

Plastic fake nests are costly whereas styroform cost nothing; use 2 screws to install each fake nest. By the way, seeing how the prices for nests had tumbled, wonder if there are less cases of break-ins nowadays?

Need advice from Sifu here.

My shoplot BH, 22x75 have around 350 nest in almost 2 years.

According to my friend Sifu, he said we must clean( spray fentona and throw away bird shit) every month. But other friend say we must not throw away the shit if we want to increase the population.

We maintain clean only if we want the quality nest but slow down the increase of population.

Which methods is true??? Please share.

Thanks

Sweep the BS and place them in several buckets and leave them in diffent spots in the BH. do this every six months so u don't have to step on Thick BS every time u enter yr BH. Spray some water on them every now and then this will realiease strong aroma. After six months remove them and use as feterlizer and repeat the process .

When u have thousands of birds you may consider to build yourself a water tower for each floor of your BH. The exhaust fan will suck in the dusty air steer up by your thousand birds and blow them through the water curtain and eliminate the dust . This will keep the dust to a minimum and u get whiter nests.

One more advantage with this system is you add better cooling in the bh . Most BH get stagnant once you reach 3000 birds . Birds body temp. Is 35 degrees and u imagine the heat produce by 3000 birds or 10,000 birds in the BH at night. All my BHs are equiped with exhaust fan from day one. Good luck

can i know ur this bh at where/????hot spot location????

in town or agri land?thanks


around this bh got other success bh like urs?????thanks

http://a7.sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ak-...524017101_n.jpg

Need advice from Sifu here. If I want to design a BH like this, will there be any problems for the bird. Should I change anything in the design? just want to learn something.....Any idea is well come.

Bro check it out this blog http://swiftletslover-jblim.blogspot.com/2...rds-nest-4.html

The owner of this bird house use half of the A4 size paper to build fake bird nest.

Cheaper and easier.

Too many partitions, and how you expect the birds to go to the 30x24 room beside the roof opening? They need to make a 180 degree turn into a 4 ft opening, remove some partitions and this might work.

just reinstalled most of the wiring in bh. some tweeter were malfunction and some were due to wiring problem. use sound detector device to check and found it is very convenient.

So after enlarge the second 4' door to 12', is it still necessary to open another side entrance of 4' to enter the 30x12 room from the roving room?

There are really many of such successful BHs around and the only difference between us is that I share but they didn't for reasons known to all here and some personal ones, too. Sucessful ones in towns and well as on agriland but more difficult on agriland due to many known problems.

Having a few thousand over a few years isn't very difficult if you get all rights; Right place, Right timing and Right conditions and you can see the growth that you never seen before......... there are still such luck now but no one is telling.

Even now, out of hundreds new BHs, there are some very successful ones, some average but most of them slow or fails as there are some many new BHs with not many owners willing to allow the birds to breed ( excluding me and some here of course). Their aims now focus more on better quality nests fetching premier price meaning white nests so they will remove nest before the birds lay their eggs and after the birds lay their eggs........no shit on the nests, you get prefect nests with no stain at all.

Which way is better of the two evils, someone did ask me and I did advice some and has since regretted telling them as they are doing what I told them to do which isn't good for the growth of the birds.

The most honorable and humane way is to allow the birds to fledged and thus repaying "the duck that lay golden eggs" and helping others to grow and also you; you may have thousands nests but afew more thousands would be better, right? The most importance of all, your own soul! Just by allowing the birds to multiply and fledged and just one successful BH can and do support 10 BH in the area. Just imagine that the 10K nests BH allow their birds to fledged and there shall be approximately 20K new birds and that's just one time and most new BHs ask for only 100 nests in a year and so you need only to capture their 5% fledged birds; you got three times to try in a year.

If only that the Chinese now insist on brown nests (after the RED nests and the bleaching whites) to be the most healthiest and safest then I would be blessed.