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

---

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

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.

If that was my BH i would just do something like this. Have the roof top opening's entrance on other side instead. This way it is easier to control light and less wastage.

And personally I don't like these so called VIP rooms, never worked for this. Just my humble opinion.



Attached thumbnail(s)

sosos, where your BH located?

You mean the roof opening only 6x6? That's too small in my opinion, normally at least 10x10 in fact mine all 12x12. The inner wall opening can be 6x6 la, I would think if growth is slow you can try open the roof wider and you will see good results.

Actually haven't heard anything from our hardworking government these few weeks, they taking time off for Christmas already?

Agreed sifu WW, but that's before this red nest scandal exploded.

Nowadays with low BN price everything has to push back few years, valuation of everything related to BN will have to be lowered. sifu like you that started swiftlet farming 10 yrs ago were the ones whom reaped the most, high price and high growth.

Given the number of BH nowadays, really don't know how some of the BH owners are ever going to recover their investments. That's just like any business I guess, some ppl make tons of money while others fail to do so.

I've seen 24x70 3 storey BH that cost 150k b4, no slab on your roof (zinc roof). Wall use 1 layer cement brick only, not even plastering on the walls.

After 3 months water leaking, and even if got nests I think you have to share with neighbors because anyone can just open up your roof or your walls and jump in.

Realistically speaking, normally about $50 per sq.ft of cost for stand alone BH so most 3 storey BH 24x70 would cost 250k or so and that's excluding land. Agriculture land normally cost anywhere between 100k to 150k per acre for areas with proven swiftlet ranching record.

How much is a 2 storey shop lot in Jerantut sell for? Let's say about 500k, which I think is already sky high for town like Jerantut, then your nest even value at 1000 each also not close to 1 mil.

And don't forget ppl value nests at 1k each because they used to sell for 4k+ per kg, now it is half the price and god knows how long it will last. If you can't get it cheap then why buy it unless you got lots of dough lying around nothing better to do with it.

This post has been edited by northface: Dec 3 2011, 01:52 PM

Let's say because of low BN price now you only value $600 per nest, 360 nest comes to $216,000. Total is 636k, since he's your friend etc you give him 50k more for renovation, work done etc.

Even then I wouldn't pay more than 700k for this shop, asking for 1mil is unrealistic, if that BH was mine and someone offer me 800k I quickly sell already. You really don't know how many months or years before nest price recover.

Furthermore seems like the whole shop is used for BH only so you have ZERO rental income, your income from this shop is from the nest you sell. 360 nest won't even get you 0.5kg every month, you do the math and see what your 'rental income' is from harvested nest.

Reality check, CNY is coming in 1 month's time. If there's such a huge demand we would have already seen price increase some time ago.
Mind you BN is not like vegetables you harvest them from the field and can send straight to customers. BN needs to be cleaned, packed and shipped overseas.

Therefore if the retailers see a surge in demand and the processors get orders they would have already started stocking up, not in a few weeks time. Hence my conclusion is this year's demand for BN is basically gone, can only hope for clearing up of the red nest mess next year and hopefully Chinese start consuming BN again.

Actually what's the price for this week? I cannot bear to look at the nest I have in my store....

Thanks for the advice sifu WW. Surprisingly I called up a friend in Pekan today he said over there corner nest can still fetch 2.5k and cup 3-3.2k as of today.

Anyways, since the price depression of BN I haven't been harvesting at all, all I do when I go into my BH is to check on the sound and other problems etc. Really hope in 2012 the price can get back to 4k. Good thing with BH is that it's very low maintenance, only pay minimal water/electricity every month, hopefully all of us can weather the storm.

Bro mois, you should be VERY HAPPY with such a result, I don't think anywhere in peninsular Malaysia can you achieve such growth rate anymore.

Right now your BH is already considered successful, you can even sell it for millions. So just sit back and wait for harvest every 2 weeks!

Once a BH reaches over 1k you can harvest every 2 weeks so u don't miss nests that little birds have flown away, I think a lot of ppl know that

As for renovation, since yours is so successful already why renovate? I suppose you want to expand your BH but be very careful not to do very drastic changes or it might even affect your current bird population.

I would just build another one beside the successful one haha!

I have a dilemma here, today I was picking out some nests out of my stash for gift to friends, and I noticed there were ants ALL OVER my nests. I keep my nests in a well ventilated space, but not refrigerated in those big plastic boxes.

The ants are common household ants, the tiny ones that emit a smell when you squash them. Since to my knowledge ants don't eat bird's nest, then why are they all over my nests? Any sifus enlighten me?

Hmm ok, maybe I used to sell my nest every few weeks I never have ant problem. Now with the low BN price I just dump all nest in my store and now it's become an ant heaven.

So many ants!! I just put some of the nest in the freezer today hopefully when I go home today it would be easier just to brush off the dead ants because I'm lazy to get the nest wet, then they expand and have to dry up again.

When I was building my latest BH, because it had lots of tall trees around my agri land I had to pay to local kampong folks to chop down some of those huge trees.

However due to logistic concerns so just left those trees as it is and let them rot. Occasionally I will tell the folks to try and help me burn the tree trunks off bit by bit but since it is too huge they are basically still around. Lately I noticed these rotting wood are actually breeding a lot of insects especially after rain you see all those termites flying around and only around these rotting wood and the number of swiftlets 'cari makan' around my agri land is unbelievable.

So there you go, maybe this is easier than breeding fruit flies or what not (somemore might bring disaster to nearby farmers). Just chop off some nearby trees, stack them up and over time they will rot and attract insects.

Ask your electrician to bypass a few wall sockets that are not connected to MCB at all, that way during rain will not trip because a lot of MCB very sensitive.

Connect your amps to that socket, and you can protect your amps by using those computer surge protector, so far I've been doing this for 2-3 years no amp got fried by lightning yet.

Nice pics aeiou, the price is high because it is a retail technique. You don't just drop your price 20-30% even if sales are low.

All these old Chinese medicine shop are still selling high because they have to maintain the illusion that all these nests are really worth that much. They probably pay very low price to source these nests anyways, so even though sales is low these past few months their margin is still outrageously high, easily 3-5x of profit on these nests.

But given that one of the pics show that there are lower price over the old price, it probably means that the market is really really slow that some of these chinaman shops are finally giving in.

Swift4ever look closely on the left side of the pic on the wall, they have the weights listed. 1 Tahil = 37.79931 grams.