The MDK Swiftlet House Diagnosis Method

Why diagnose first

If a doctor handed you medicine without asking a single question, would you dare to take it?

Of course not. Yet many swiftlet houses have been taking that kind of medicine for years. Sound not working? Change the sound. No birds? Buy a hormone. Still nothing? Try another brand.

The money is gone, and here is the hard truth: going from zero to a thousand birds takes years, but a thousand to zero happens fast. The most expensive thing is not the equipment. It is the time you spend waiting.

So we work the other way around: others sell you answers. We find the problem first.

One more thing, plainly: we would rather you did not read all this and go straight to changing things yourself.

Send us photos. It is free. Whether to change anything, and when, is your call after that.

We have seen a lot of houses, so we can see your blind spot. Whatever you have not changed by now is probably something you believe is already correct. Looking at it yourself, that is exactly what you cannot see.

The order

What the diagnosis looks at.
The order cannot be shuffled.

A diagnosis is not a checklist. It has an order. If the first layer fails, everything after it is meaningless.

LAYER 1 · THE MASTER SWITCH

The entrance

The entrance level, angle and light. First, how to count them: the hole birds fly in from outside is the entrance hole. The first door they meet once inside is the second entrance (the second door that birds will pass through in your bird house). If your house has an air well, the air well counts as the entrance hole.

The level line means this: standing at the second entrance, at some angle you should be able to see the entrance hole. It's not just about height, side-to-side offset counts too. When the two holes are misaligned, whether up-down or side-to-side, birds have to make a hard turn on the way in. If you can see through, that stretch flies straight.

Angle is the slope from the entrance hole to the second entrance, and it's tied to distance. Too narrow doesn't work. Too steep doesn't work. Too long doesn't work. Too wide doesn't work either. All four pull against each other. You can't lengthen the distance to make up for a bad angle.

Light is actually three separate things to look at: natural daylight, whether the setting sun shines straight in (not hard to fix, just design the second entrance's position around it; what matters is the window when birds come home, when every other house has already gone dim and yours is still bright), and any lighting you install yourself (before installing anything, ask: is it to keep predators out, to attract insects, or to attract birds?). Too dark, and birds need more time to feel their way in, because they're scared.

Swiftlets fly fast. If getting in requires an awkward, forced move, they'd rather not come in at all. So until birds can glide in smoothly, airflow, temperature and humidity mean nothing yet. This is the layer almost no swiftlet house has ever had checked.

LAYER 2 · THE PASSAGE

Flight path and nesting planks

Getting in is one thing. Staying is another. Is the flight path smooth? Is there enough runway? Are the planks aged or mouldy? Think of a bird coming home like a plane landing: it needs a stretch of distance to touch down. If the entrance is too steep, the flight path becomes effectively too short, and the plane can't land. (Some people call this the runway, that's airport language. The correct term is flight path.) You can skip a harvest, but you must never neglect your planks.

LAYER 3 · THE ENVIRONMENT

Airflow, temperature, humidity, sound coverage

If airflow is too strong, swiftlets avoid it, and the way they avoid it is by building nests as high as possible, tucked behind the plank, so the nest's position is itself the answer. Completely still air is what we call “dead airflow”, no fresh air, and the colony grows to a certain size then stalls. Temperature and humidity are a different matter: a gauge on the wall doesn't measure the layer where the birds actually live, moist air doesn't rise, and height, temperature swings and wind speed all skew the reading. So we look at the site, not the gauge. Sound coverage tells the same story: birds not nesting in front of the tweeter, birds avoiding the tweeter, or birds nesting behind the tweeter, all three are signs something is wrong.

Only now do we reach the things everyone loves to discuss. Not because they don't matter. Because they come last. If the first two layers fail, every ringgit you spend on this layer is wasted.

How we work together

Four steps.

You send photos and one recording

Three photos and one sound recording are enough.

1The entrance, shot from outside, straight on

2The flight path, shot from the entrance inwards

3The nesting planks and ceiling, shot from inside, looking up

4Record the sound inside the house, standing on the ground, about six feet from the wall

We take a look for free and give you the right direction

After reading the photos and hearing the recording, we tell you where the problem most likely sits and what to do next. Free. That is not politeness. This step should never have cost money in the first place.

Improve step by step, to suit your house

We go by your house's actual condition and your bird population, in stages. When a product is needed, we recommend the one that fits and tell you why. When nothing needs to be bought, we say so. Sometimes the prescription is: knock down that wall and open a second entrance (the second door that birds will pass through in your bird house).

You update, we confirm

Once you have done it, send photos. We confirm it was done right, then fine-tune. To be clear: your updates are what make it possible for us to help you. A swiftlet house is never a set-and-forget business.

Why diagnose first