Sunday, September 27, 2009

Bird Call Tests

Before you build a swiftlet's bird house, the first thing to consider is where.
One of the most important factors to be successful in this swiftlet farming
as advised by all the experts in this field is location, location and location.

How do we know that which location is good?
A "bird call testing" is one of the method to identify the potential location.

Here are the results from two bird call tests on September26th, 2009 on
our intended location in Southern part of Thailand by Khun Wor.

He manage to obtain a test unit that can be operated with a cigarette
outlet from his car by telling an electrician in a small shop of what
he wanted. The guy quickly assembled one for him and charged him only 200 Baht!

With the below results , are they good enough , you tell me.
We are still not quite sure yet.
Will have to do more tests soon.









Friday, September 25, 2009

How I bumped into Swiftlet farming.

Actually my hobby is in Guppy rearing, it has been for three years that I've raised my fancy guppy. I met many nice people while on this hobby. Until recently (September 2009), Khun Wor who with a tiltle of Full Black King, ( he won two times Champion on his Full Black guppy), was very inactive in my guppy web board, which now became Guppy and Swiftlet web board. http://www.g-u-p-p-y.com/index.php

During early September 2009, I asked him why he was so quiet lately. He said he had been busy reading and studying about a new would be his new hobby and investment, Swiftlet farming. He asked me to look into it, as he knew that I have a lot of free time and like to surf the net.

From that day on, I 've been reading a lot about Swiftlet's articles in the net almost everyday. We also discussed about what we've learnt from our reading, what we wanted to do next thru our mobile phones daily.

Finally after the two weeks daily discussion, Khun Wor decided to build his first Swiftlet house in a small town in Southern part of Thailand. He is very optimistic about this project, while I'm still not that convinced as I read that the rate of success is only 20 to 30%. I told him that even the chance is 50:50, I still hesitated to invest into it.

Later, he proposed to me that, he will build his first house next month, October, 2009. It should be completed by January 2010. By April 2010, after three months of operating this bird house, we will evaluate the result on the number of bird staying in this bird house. If we can conclude that it's a good potential one, he would like to build another one, but with his limited fund, he asked me to joint venture with him at 50:50 partnership. I agreed, I also further proposed to him that, since he would be the one who looks after the bird house, he will get 60% of the harvested bird nests and I will get only 40% of the nests for the first five years. He seemed to be happy with this 60:40 split proposal. For the sixth years onwards, I will have yet to propose to him to split at 55:45 as less maintenance work will be required and the number of harvested nests should be much more than the first five years.

Now, everyday we still try to learn as much knowledge as we can about this Swiftlet farming. We read, we talked to people, we asked questions in the forum.

Khun Wor had located a piece of land in his hometown, he designed this building and I advised him on how to do a simple drawing. I asked my hubby's subordinate to help draw a perpective view of this design so we can asked all the experts in the swiftlet's forum to comment on it. We've made a minor modification after hearing out those comments.

Finally, we have agreed on the design of this building. It will be a three storey concrete building, 8 * 15 meter (width by length) facing north , with an open roof entrace. He is now in the process of getting the building permit before the construction, hopefully we can start by next month, October,2009.