oneup,

Please never start an external sound at 3:00AM! Unless you want your neighbors to hate you and complain about your noisy farm! Which idiot told you this... just change during the daytime... if you think the sound can drive the birds away during other time of the day.. what makes you think the sound won't drive them away at the ungodly hour of 3:00AM?

Unless your farm is at rural area or plantation... its totally not advisable to on the external sound at 3:00AM.... never.... who suggest this idea to you is very strange person with weird idea...

oneup,

Sorry for the tone of my earlier reply to your query. One can try out various pet theories if it does not affect others but the thing is to think whether a hypothesis is plausible... otherwise too many trials and errors.

The external sound is to attract birds not yet making nests in the farm or maybe even to help keep fledgings from going away to another farm... in the dead of the early morning when the birds are mating or making nests or whatever and suddenly the external sound is started... I think it might unsettled the birds especially those not yet committed to your farm and think of external sound play at that ungodly hour will serve to advertise your farm to owls...

It seems like only those who want to strike lottery or 4 digit will go to rural area in the dead of night/very early morning. to seek help from supernatural forces.. and perhaps criminals might be around as they like to go into action during ungodly hour. I often change sound at 8 Am when there are birds around and I can see their response... another thing, make sure your external sound do not contain elements of SOS or stress sound which will be detrimental to your farm.

The iron law of economics dictates prices in meeting the demand and supply is also applicable to bird nests but there is something else in play in which the responsible parties are taking so long to normalize the trade in bird nests.

I do not know what is actually happening that caused the prices of bird nest which had dropped to such a low level and now to crash? And there is no end to the problem at hand and especially to the steadily dropping prices to unprecedented levels!

I fear many BH farmers who have large loans commitment will be severely hurt for this unexpected winter is very long and very cold... spring will surely come but for now things are decidedly dicey... what to do but to tough it out?

A NOTE OF WARNING
We may not want to believe everything that is posted here as for example, the very low prices quoted for bird nest as sold may be postings from bird nests buyers with a hidden agenda. Namely to cause panics and help to influence sellers to become more willing to sell at the low prices. Something like stock traders who caused negative rumors to circulate to cause prices in the stock market to go down before buying them at a bargain. I had indeed heard from people who told me of prices that is quite low but still substantially higher than at least one of the figure given recently.

How is it that our new member who came in with his first post recently stating that"i just sell my 200kg++bn at rm1300...so sad" suddenly came in with his second post but with his posts indicator informing us that it was his 5th posting? Where may I ask is his 2, 3, 4 posts? Its a little fishy...

And may I ask why such a highly successful farmer who had 200+ kg of nest to sell could only sell for rm1,300 when we know that a productive farm or farms will have a good portion of nests in higher grade form known in Mandarin as Yen-zhan (full cup nests) that go for a few hundred rm more than the second grade of nests. As far as I know, the second grade of nests is selling for several hundred rm above rm1,300... I know because I asked around recently and even sold off a portion to tide my finances over.

The current dismal market for producers/sellers reminds me of the old cowboy films in which a nightmare of cowboys driving a large herd of cattle to market encountered a stampede. A stampede is when the cattle became frightened of something (rattle snakes, lightning or gunshot, etc) and would rush headlong in a body and the cowboys would had to try and gather the escaping herd back... its akin to the the punters caught in a stock market correction and would distressed the situation further by selling even at very low prices just so to get out of the sinking market.

The current dismal situation will not last forever but how long it will last and how soon it can recover is anybody's guess. But please lets be frank and not throw out irrational statements so as to further frighten or demoralized sincere farmers who are already feeling miserable at the actual situations in the bird nests trade.

This post has been edited by philoswiflet: Jun 21 2012, 03:39 AM

Hi Tiger,
Sorry if you feel offended by my earlier feedback. However, I have a few suggestions for your considerations:

You should try to find more BN purchasers so that you have wider choices of people to trade with; such as the big time player provided by a fellow forummer.

You should take measures to improve the quality of your BN. For example, you mentioned about broken nests... one thing to do is to harvest the nests more carefully, preferably by climbing up a ladder instead of using a long stick with knife attached while standing on the ground. This will take more time but the harm to the nests will be lessen.

And the nests might be broken because of low humidity; not enough moisture which result in ragged nests. For best result, use accurate and reliable hygrostat to control the humidifiers to release the optimum level of moisture into the BH.

To harvest the nests as soon as possible and sell them soon as when the nests turned yellowish, the prices will be somewhat affected depending on how yellow they are.

You might want to clean the farms more often as accumulation of large amount of guano will cause the nests to turn yellowish after a period.

This post has been edited by philoswiflet: Jun 22 2012, 06:56 PM

Laugh and the world laugh with you and if cry, then you cry alone.
Its really a very bad situation... but nothing much individual farmers can do but to maintain the farms so as to produce more and better quality nests until prices finally rebound above this unprecedented low level.

The Bersih 3.0 rally/demonstration in KL for a clean election is yellow... the anti-Lynas Perhimpunan Hijau is Green (Environment as in Green Peace) and now bird nests farmers are staging our demo on 21-7-12... what color should we take for to represent us? Should we use Red as in the Red nests that landed us in such a protracted troubles? Red can means anger as in the English expression... Seeing Red... Well, we are seeing red in the dramatic fall in prices in bird nests since a year ago and there is just no relief in sight... the government is causing this industry terrible harm by the way it had been handling this matter... how long must we wait before its resolved?

This post has been edited by philoswiflet: Jul 10 2012, 10:46 PM

Hi coolandy,

Chin Woo stadium
10AM 21-7-12

Please correct me if I got it wrong.



This post has been edited by philoswiflet: Jul 13 2012, 07:41 PM

Those who have angry birds T-shirt might want to wear them to the event!

Its prodigal to burn bird nests and frankly, I don't think people other than farmers will be sympathetic as the general public will not feel the pain.

Perhaps we can each bring a sack of guano at the next demo/rally to show what we think of the responsible authorities for their lack of spirit to quickly bring swiftlet farmers miseries to a quick conclusion and allow genuine market forces to determine the prices of our nests.

Its used to be that people would swear at nonsense by saying that its bullshit... now perhaps we can change the swear word to bird-shit...

Now that the comic books heroes such as Spiderman, batman are coming on to the big screens... maybe its time for a Birdman to arises and come to the aid of our much oppressed farmers against the fiendish big time operators out to corner the market as well as their allies, the officials....

I think demo for the time being is the best method as the squeaky wheel gets the grease... see how Najib finally responsed to the Lynas matter only after the massive demo in Kuantan not long ago.

The lengthy essay in mandarin is not only highly negative to the swiftlet farming industry but its also erroneous in some matters and extremely crude which reflected on the callous character of the author.

I'd mentioned before that few non-farmers will be sympathetic to the plights of our misfortunes as we see the winter of our sufferings stretching out for a year now without respite with prices going lower and lower to unprecedented levels.

While some farmers are to be blame for their haughty attitudes; yet its also common to see the manifestation of what Chinese termed as the "Red-eye" diseases or what in English is sometimes refer to as the "Green-eye monster"... meaning that jealousy which consumed that particular writer into pouring out his venom into such a tactless and crude diatribe against swiftlet entrepreneurs amidst the depths of their sufferings! There is news that some farmers in town areas had given up hope and even resorted to renovating back their farms into shop-houses!

We can only save our industry and ourselves by utilizing the good offices of our associations that stand united so as to negotiate with the relevant authorities into dismantling whatever unreasonable obstacles that are in the way to ensure a healthy climate for ebn producers and processors and traders. We have to save ourselves for we ourselves are the Birdmen! So lets hope the rally or forum or whatever its called (Whatever the colors of the cats never matter as long as they can catch rats!) at Chin Woo stadium this 21-7-2012 will serve its purpose into prodding the authorities to rapidly solve our problems so as to save further deterioration of this important component of the overall Malaysian economic industry.



This post has been edited by philoswiflet: Jul 18 2012, 05:56 AM

To Patrons of Jalan Pasar shops,

Regarding the electronics shops at Jalan Pasar; any particular better shops to recommend? Better meaning well stock in terms of the ranges of inventories for swiflet farming usages and reasonable prices and more or less honest sellers that do not sell consumers faulty equipment or junks.

Hi aeiou228,

Thanks a lot for your info.

Hi aeiou228,
I was interested to go and suggested this idea but the other guys would like to go somewhere else and so have to follow majority's wishes.

Whoever can speak on our behalf is beneficial... CSL being the head of MCA certainly has some weight in the current government and remember... this swiftlet business was first promoted by MCA some years ago as a possible business for Chinese entrepreneurs who have less and less opportunities to find livelihoods in viable enterprises. I at least am pleased that our collective voices had been heard and hope that better things will quickly follow-let the Agriculture ministry help us instead of hindering us. We need all the help we can get as things might go downhill rapidly if nothing is done as quickly as possible.

It was good to hear that the splinter group at Seberang Prai is staying united with the national association and it will be good for them to follow through with the demo on 29-7-12 in which not just RFID is on the agenda but also the raising of the 30ppm to 70ppm as per Indonesia and Thailand and also the quick lifting of export to Hong Kong and China.

This post has been edited by philoswiflet: Jul 23 2012, 06:11 AM

A successful farmer told me don't need to change sound at all if it still attract birds and the nest growth still increase... it means if something is working well, why change?

For myself, I often change the sounds. So, if your farm is successful and nest growth is good, and since you are scare about making this change... then just let it be; don't change for the sake of change unless you are confident that the change will make things much better.

I do not think the birds will be scared and become unfamiliar if you change the sound after 7 years... as long as the sound is a good one. Even if the sound is an average one, they will still come back to their nests. Just make sure its not SOS/distress sounds or fighting sounds. Good sounds are needed to attract young birds from outside your farm to visit and perhaps stay permanently.

This conspiracy to have a choke hold on the bird nests trade is salivating to the idiots involve that it will take a while before they will be truly willing to let go... its like the Chinese saying of letting a cooked duck fly away just when they are about to sink their jaws into the duck... The new bird nests farmer association stated that they will conduct two more demos to enlighten all farmers as to the dangers we are still in... Its really a pain in the ass that we innocent farmers trying hard to make a buck is sucked into this vortex of business conspiracy. Do hope this travesty will somehow or rather sort itself out and for things to get back to normal soon.

We must show the jerk for what he is... a true blackguard... a man without any sense of honor and decency... a true SOB. We must see that we find a Archiles spot to strike at...