Mar 1, 2012

Swiftlet housing boom - Bùng nổ nhà nuôi chim yến

The insatiable appetite of Chinese everywhere for bird’s nest has spawned a multi-million ringgit swiftlet farming business in Malaysia. JESSICA LIM and WILSON HENRY find out that the booming industry is ironically also the white-nest swiftlet’s best chance for survival.
THE heavy metal door creaked open, and we were ushered forth into inky blackness.

Every opening to the outside world had been bricked up save one on the highest floor. The three-storey shoplot was completely bare — no furniture, appliance or amenities.

The toilets weren’t working and the floor was spattered with droppings which squished underfoot.

Turn up your nose, as you might, at the thought of living in such a dwelling, but to the hundreds of little birds whose nests were glued to the plywood beams on the ceiling, this was home.
As Malaysia Bird’s Nest Merchants Association assistant secretary Mah Swee Lye carefully hold up a thumbnail-sized white- nest swiftlet egg, his satisfaction was evident.

"We want the baby birds to come back to this house to build their own nests in time. So we make sure this is like a five-star hotel to them," he grinned, before gently returning the egg to the nest.

Bird’s nest, highly sought after for centuries because of its acclaimed medical and therapeutic properties, was once exclusively served only to Chinese emperors, their families and the most senior of court officials.

Now, anyone can have a bowl, if he digs deep into his pocket.

White-nest swiftlet nests, which can fetch over RM6,000 a kilogramme, are the most highly prized of edible bird’s nests.

This is because, except for a few strands of downy black feathers, it is purely the hardened saliva of the swiftlet.
In contrast, nests of black-nest and glossy swiftlets are enmeshed with feathers, moss and grass.

Indonesia supplies well over half of the 200-tonne global demand every year. Malaysia, the third largest producer after Thailand, meets about 10 per cent of world demand.

To build a bird house

As we toured the swiftlet house by torchlight, Mah pointed out a CD player placed against a wall. Wires ran from it to loudspeakers in various corners of the house, including a solitary window on the third floor.

Several hours a day, a recording of swiftlet songs would be played in an attempt to draw young birds to the house.

Yes, it is the birds that are just striding out on their own and looking to set up home which are targeted.

Once a swiflet builds its nest, it would return season after season to the same spot. If the nest is removed, it would simply build another.

Mah said there are consultants who charge a few hundred ringgit for a recording.

Association members’ own recordings seem to work just as well, he said.

"We change tracks sometimes. We’d try baby bird sounds, mating calls or sounds of them playing.

"We have to test to see what works. Hopefully they’d come, see how nice it is in here, then decide to build their nests."

Mah explained that a temperature of 28 degrees celsius and humidity of 80-90 per cent was needed to simulate the conditions found in caves.

The conditions are maintained with the help of a simple contraption comprising a few large PVC pipes that lead to the outside the building. Some buckets of water are placed directly under these vents to keep the air damp. BIRD HOTEL BROADCAST: ’We’d try baby bird sounds, mating calls or sounds of them playing,’ Mah explains.

While no effort is spared in seeing to the swiftlets’ needs, "hotel owners" must also take special security precautions.

"The house is mine, the birds are mine, but sometimes the nests are not mine," said Mah.

Thieves steal nests regardless of whether they contain babies or eggs.

So, deterrents include installation of heavy locks, night-vision CCTVs and motion-sensor alarm systems.

From caves to soup bowls

Traditionally, nests were collected from caves. It was a risky affair involving Orang Asli "harvesters" scaling rickety scaffoldings that were as high as 60 metres up the cave walls.

It was sometimes preceded by elaborate rituals involving animal sacrifices to appeal to the spirits for a safe day of nest collection.

Swiftlet houses have been proliferating in the country ever since white-nest swiftlets were discovered nesting in abandoned shophouses in coastal towns about 20 years ago.

From 100-odd in 1995, local entrepreneurs — taking advantage of the strong demand for the delicacy in China and Hong Kong — today operate an estimated 10,000 shophouse swiftlet hotels around the country.

Mah said the nests are checked regularly and harvested only when the baby birds can fly and fend for themselves. This will be when the birds are about two months old.

The nests are sold to middlemen, and most of them are sent to Indonesia for processing, where impurities are painstakingly removed using tweezers.

"In Indonesia, girls aged between 14 and 18 are employed for this job. Their only qualification is that they must have good eyesight," said Mah, who visited one such Indonesian factory recently.

And their nests shall save them

Swiftlet farming in Malaysia has the full support of the Wildlife and National Parks Department (Perhilitan).

Perhilitan Biological Conservation Department director Siti Hawa Yatim said it is the high value of the nests that puts the birds at risk in the first place, but the activity is also the only thing that could possibly save them.

"I’m pretty sure the swiftlets aren’t exactly happy when their nests are taken away, but observation shows that they cope well with it," she said.

"The harvesters want to increase nest production in their shophouses, so they make sure the baby birds are fully mature before removing the nests.

"And we’re finding that as long as their babies survive, the parent birds are pretty okay with the deal."

In contrast, she said that in caves, greedy opportunists would grab every nest they see, thinking "I have to take it before someone else does".

In studies done in cave swiftlet communities in Pulau Tinggi and Pulau Redang, the department found that nests were often scraped off cave walls even before they were fully formed.

It was also distressing to see broken eggs and dead baby birds on the cave floors, Siti Hawa said.

After a trip to Indonesia in 1996 organised by the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna, Perhilitan was convinced that commercial farming was the best way to bring the dwindling numbers of white-nest swiftlets back up.

Siti Hawa said the department was aware an estimated 70 per cent of swiftlet "hotels" end in failure, and research was underway to figure out how to turn those statistics around.

One project specifically studies the calls of the swiftlet.

"There are over 1,000 swiftlet call CDs out there, but only a small number of them actually work.

"We’re trying to understand why, so that we can encourage more people to try their hand in this business."

Perhilitan is also studying artificial incubation as a way of increasing the bird’s population.

Siti Hawa explained that white-nest swiftlets produce as many eggs as they can during a breeding period. If an egg is removed, the parent would quickly lay another.

Commercial breeding has been used as a conservation strategy before, but on a small scale, such as with with song birds Murai Batu (common shama) and speaking birds Tiong Mas (hill mynah).

As much as she would like to see the swiftlets thriving naturally without human intervention, Siti Hawa admitted that it wasn’t a realistic hope given the commercial value of their nests.

"If their nests weren’t so valuable, they would be quite safe. Other swiflet species which don’t produce edible nests are abundant, nobody bothers them.

"It’s not their fault that people want their nests. If we don’t protect them this way, they’ll die out."

Source: www.twelvespring.com.my

1 comment:

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