Waiting

Happy Chinese New Year. I was busy preparing for Chinese New Year and have not catch up with writing the blog.

Many of my relatives and friends know that I have a new bird house. So whenever they see me, the first thing they will ask is “are there any birds in your bird house?” and my answer is always “no, not yet”.

The way I answered them sound slight disappointed. Yes, to tell you the truth. The day when the sound in the bird house was turned on, I was expecting the swiftlets to swarming into my bird house immediately and I was expecting to find bird nests in the bird house within a week. I was so excited and went into the bird house after 2 days but found no swiftlets inside the bird house. The high expectation was little let down.

People used to said that the higher the expectation the higher the disappointment. So after 2 weeks, I felt more disappointed especially when I was constantly been asked “are there any birds in your bird house?”

Now, I have told myself not to be disappointed. It is the actual process and time frame to attract the swiftlets into my bird house. I looked back at the projection in my proposal before I started my bird house; I have only projected 30 nests in the first year. So the time frame is still within the range.

It takes a fruit tree 3 to 5 years to start growing fruits for harvesting. Rearing cows and sheep also require 2 to 3 years before selling them so what is waiting 2 to 3 years for the bird house to be occupied for nest harvesting?

Swiftlets farming is a waiting game. You need to wait for the swiftlets to multiply. At the meantime I shall be playing golf while waiting.

BH after 2 weeks of operation

Called my bird house caretaker today. He said that he saw some swiftlets flying in and out the bird house. Inside the bird house he saw some bird shit on the ground but the amount of shit is not enough to indicate that the birds have stayed overnight.

Swiftlets will usually visit the bird house and play around but it will take a while before they decide to stay overnight.

I have placed insect powder near the entrance hole to attract the swiftlets. The insect powder is a mixture of insect eggs and food. After adding some water, the insect eggs will start to hatch and produce maggots. After a few weeks, it will turn into flying insects and start to fly around the entrance hole. Swiftlets will be attracted by the insect and come into the bird house.

Sometime the flying insects might attract other types of birds to come into the bird house too!

Bird Sound

You can have a bird house built perfectly according to the swiftlet requirements. The temperature is right, the humidity is good and everything according to the expert’s knowledge. However, how do you get the swiftlets to come in?

Well, just imagine a newly open restaurant, the food is delicious, the place is clean and the environment is good. But how to let customers know about the restaurant? The restaurant owner might have to advertise in the newspapers, radio or even television.

For a bird house the only way to advertise to the swiftlets is to use external sound. A good external sound will be like a good advertisement which can attract a lot of customers.

Then are all the external sounds the same? No, there are a lot of different external sounds available in the market and the effectiveness of the external sound also depends on the location of the bird house. One good and effective external sound at one area might not be good and effective in another area.

The best way is to get a few good external sounds then try one first. If the sound is not effective, then try another one. Try until an effective sound is found then keep it for a few months to attract the swiftlets down to the bird house.

As for my bird house, the first external sound that I used was not effective. So a second external sound was used. I am still monitoring the effectiveness of the second external sound. This is a trying stage and might need a few tries before getting the correct sound.

My Bird House - 4th week

My bird house is completed. The work took exactly 4 weeks. In fact it could be much faster if not for the few holidays along the way.

All the final details are checked. The alarm is installed with a mobile phone SIM card so that it can call me when the alarm trigger. I used a digi prepaid card because the telco allows the card to be actived for 365 days by paying RM30. I added another RM20 standby for the call charges.

Wifi is added to the CCTV using a router so that I could view the pictures from my notebook. I could see the picture from all the 4 cameras in my car without going into the bird house. Technology is great!

Bird sound is turned on and everything is set. The external sound will play from 7.30am to 8.00pm and the internal sound will play for 24 hours using 2 amplifiers alternating every 6 hours.

The next important thing is to test out the external sound for a few days. If it doesn’t work then the sound must be changed. The external sound must be monitored until a suitable sound is found for the bird house.

After everything is done, the only thing to do is to wait and pray. Hopefully the swiftlets will come to stay in my swiftlet hotel.

Swiftlet Farming in Malaysia

Article in the Star Paper dated December 13, 2008 for your interest

The sky’s the limit for swiftlet farming?
By Errol Oh

THERE are indications that swiftlet farming has the potential to be as huge in this country as it is in Indonesia, where listed companies are among the industry participants.

Malaysia enjoys certain advantages such as the fact that the swiftlets are found only in some parts of South-East Asia. There is also swiftlet farming in Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, the Philippines and Myanmar, but our local conditions may tip the balance in our favour.

Also, the frequent forest fires in Indonesia in recent years have driven away many birds and many have ended up in Malaysia.

Says swiftlet farm owner Dr Christopher Lim: “Indonesia is the pioneer in swiftlet farming. It has done quite well in the past but lately it has found that the nest production and quality are not as good as in Malaysia. So much so that the Indonesians sometimes buy nests from Malaysia.”

Nobody seems to be concerned about the possibility that once swiftlet farming takes off in a big way, supply may one day overtake demand.

Says Kelvin Heng of Pearlnest, a swiftlet farming consultancy outfit: “There’s a limited supply all the time. The swiftlets nest only three times a year. People are getting more health-conscious. The wellness industry is growing fast. The demand for bird nests won’t go down.”

Before this, the Malaysian operators are almost exclusively minor-league entrepreneurs and property owners.

Today, bigger players are coming into the picture as well. For one thing, swiftlet farming is one of the East Coast Economic Region’s promoted activities.

On Nov 25, Agriculture and Agro-based Industry Minister Datuk Mustapa Mohamed said his ministry would propose to the Cabinet that the development of the industry be given more attention.

A prominent Tan Sri who controls a group of listed companies is believed to have personally invested RM2mil to build a swiftlet farm in Pekan, and may be looking to have more in other locations.

At least one Malaysian-listed company has ventured into the game, and that is Seal Inc Bhd.

Its wholly-owned subsidiary, Seal Ventures Sdn Bhd, is the developer of Krai Eco Park, a project comprising about 60 three-storey buildings in Kuala Krai, Kelantan.

Seal Inc’s 2008 annual report refers to the project as an industrial park development, but a Krai Eco Park brochure unmistakably positions the units as swiftlet houses.

Supporting the industry

Another telling sign that swiftlet farming is gaining momentum here is that a sub-industry has emerged in Malaysia to provide swiftlet farmers with a broad range of products and services.

The former include audio, monitoring and security systems; chemicals; and fittings for the birdhouses.

Lim is not the only one to have produced a book on swiftlet farming, although he recalls facing a lot of resistance within the industry when he began writing in 2006.

In fact, there are several such publications in English, Chinese and Malay. Sharing of information, it seems, is no longer a no-no.

On the services side, there are dozens of consultants who offer to design, build and manage swiftlet farms.

There are also those who organise seminars and courses. There are dozens of websites and blogs relating to the industry.

The worry is that some of the service providers may not have the necessary expertise and experience, and are instead looking to capitalise on the surge in swiftlet farming.

According to industry insiders, the standard consulting fee for turning shoplots into birdhouses is RM10,000.

“That’s a much faster way to make money than by investing in the farms, which will take a few years before you start seeing good returns,” says a farmer.

Swiftlet Ventures International, which has not begun operating its first birdhouse in Rawang, says first-hand knowledge is not always crucial. The consultancy’s edge, says manager Mohammad Azimullah, is its ties with an Indonesian firm with a 30-year track record and with other Malaysian players.

The argument is that it is just as important to be able to draw on this network’s pool of know-how.

Another new trend to watch is the development of the so-called eco parks, which feature rows of purpose-built swiftlet farms at single locations away from residential and commercial areas.

This way, there will be compliance with the authorities’ requirements and there will be no neighbours to complain about the birdhouses.

However, some industry players think that it will take a long time to populate so many birdhouses in one spot.

A Fail Bird House

There are about 5 existing swiftlet bird houses around 500m radius from my bird house. Most of the bird houses are quite discrete and it is rather hard to notice them unless you look carefully. One of the bird houses even put up a decoy signboard saying that they are trading tiles.

However, there is one particular bird house which is very badly built. The front entrance hole is an existing window cover partially with plywood. Two tweeters are placed at the entrance hole. The sound from the tweeters is so loud that it becomes a nuisance to the whole area there.

Since this bird house is just a few lots opposite my bird house, my contractor have been observing the bird house daily and found that there is not a single swiftlet flying into the bird house. I suppose it must be a fail bird house and the owner keep turning up the sound trying to attract the swiftlets. In fact, if the sound is too loud it will scare away the swiftlets instead of attracting them.

Investing in a bird house is for a long term basis. It must be properly design and build. However, many bird houses are built on shops/factories that the owners have difficulty to rent it out. They just want to spend very little money to do up the bird house and hope that the swiftlets will just fly into it and produce a lot of nests. They are trying out their luck and contribute to the statistic of another fail bird house.

My Bird House - 3 1/2 weeks later

Visited the bird house this afternoon. Most of the renovation works have completed. Only outstanding works are the installation of alarm system and CCTV.

Alarm and CCTV is part of the equipment that all bird house owners need to consider. Alarm is to prevent thief from entering the bird house and the CCTV is to monitor swiftlets entering the entrance hole and the nesting area.

It is advisable not to enter to the bird house too often because it may distract the swiftlets and also the smell of human present in the nesting area. Therefore, it is best to enter the bird house only once a month. The only way to monitor the entrance hole and the nesting area from outside is to use the CCTV.

The CCTV that I install will have 4 infra red cameras with a video recorder. The recorded data can be downloaded into a computer notebook. Some bird house owners afraid that the infra red camera will distract the swiftlets but those tested found no such problem.

My bird house is currently enclosed with aroma. We have to let the aroma spread in the bird house for about 3 days before turning on the sound.

We have targeted to commence the bird house on Wednesday (2 days from now). Hopefully, there will be a lot of swiftlets tenants.

Cat and Dogs

Many people ask me how my dogs can be friend with a cat. Well, let me tell you how it all started.

This stray cat (we named him Kitty) used to roam in front of our house. My wife and children felt pity and often fed him food. Whenever the cat was around, our dogs will bark at the cat nonstop. However, since the dogs were tied, the cat was not afraid of the dogs.

After a few weeks, the cat became very brave. He started to come into our car porch and sat very near to the dogs. Since the dogs were tied, they were unable to reach the cat. The cat sat there looking at the dogs and the dogs as usual will bark at the cat continuously.

Whenever we untied the dogs, the cat will quickly run away.

This went on for a few weeks. Then one day, when we untied the dogs, the dogs quickly ran towards the cat. But the cat instead of running away, he stood there waiting to fight with the dogs. When the dogs were near him, he used his front paw to hit the dogs’ face.

After about a minute, the dogs started smelling the cat and the cat just stood there with his tail down and his back spine curl up. Then miracle happened, the dogs just walked away and played by themselves leaving the cat alone. Every few minutes, one of the dogs will run to the cat to smell him and the cat was always ready to use his paw for defence.

We let the dogs and the cat there for a few hours. Then we tried it again everyday. After a few days, the dogs and the cat have become good friends. They play and sleep together and the dogs offer the cat their food.

Now the stray cat has a home and three good friends.

I think the cat is very intelligence. He dares to take the first step to get acquaintance with the dogs by sitting near the dogs everyday. We should sometime learn from a cat too.