In September I was teaching a class in Cambodia. When we got to house ageing, I said this from the front: a lot of people think ageing only happens to swiftlet houses that are five or ten years old.
Actually, your house starts getting old the day you finish building it.
What you are seeing
The most common sign is that the nests stop increasing.
When it gets worse, the nests you harvest come out dirty. Something grows on them. In Malaysia we call it lumut. Moss.
A pair of swiftlets builds more than once a year, so your nest count should keep moving up. If it does not, something inside the house has gone wrong.
The usual mistake: thinking time is up
“The house is old.” Those words do a lot of damage.
They sound like age, like time has run out and there is nothing anyone can do. So a lot of people say it and stop looking.
But what people call ageing comes down to a few things that keep dragging the house down. You can check every one of them, and every one of them can be fixed.
It also means a new house should not relax. If ageing starts on day one, the best money a new house owner can spend is looking after the planks from the start.
The other mistake is changing the sound again and again. Fewer birds, so put on a new track and see if it pulls a few more in.
The picture I used in class was Panadol. When you have a fever you keep taking Panadol. The fever goes down, but you keep getting sick.
Bring that back to the swiftlet house. Changing the sound is the Panadol. It does not touch whatever is stopping the birds from settling in.
What is actually dragging it down
One, whatever has been sprayed on the planks.
Enzymes, aromas, things you mixed yourself. Be very careful about any of it going on the planks. A plank works like a sponge. It soaks up whatever you spray, and once it is in, you cannot get it out. Nothing shows on the day you spray. It builds up slowly.
Two, neglected planks plus a lot of misting.
Last year we went to Cambodia and looked at a lot of our students’ houses. In many of them the misting was running very heavily. Then we saw why. The air vents in the walls were letting in a lot of airflow, the house kept drying out, so the owner kept adding water.
The problem is this. If the planks are not being looked after and you spray that much water, the planks will get mould.
And you will not always see mould. By the time you can see it, it is already serious. Not seeing it does not mean it is not there. So a plank that looks clean is not a reason to relax. Go and look properly.
Three, planks with too many deep grooves.
More grooves is not better, and deeper grooves is not better. The more grooves and the deeper they are, the easier the plank gets dirty.
Stack these together and you get what people call “ageing”. It starts on the first day and builds up one day at a time.
The order to check things
One at a time. Do not change everything at once.
One, think back on what you have sprayed. In the last few years, has anything gone onto the planks? What was it, and for how long? You do not need to climb anything for this step. Sit down and think.
Two, look at how much misting you run, and why. If you are spraying because the planks keep drying out, find out why they dry out first. Adding more water is just chasing the dryness.
Three, take a torch up. Look at the colour of the planks, the nest bases, and whether there is moss on the nests. Pay special attention to the planks that have stayed empty.
Four, only when all of that is clear do you talk about washing the planks.
When it is finally the equipment’s turn
Nobody wants to wash planks. Why? You have to climb up and wipe them one by one.
We tried pretty much every product on the market we could use. We could not find one you could spray upward from the floor and have the mould dealt with. So we ended up with Meranti+ Nesting Plank Enhancer, which you spray from below. Use water with some force behind it so the dust gets knocked straight off the plank, because the dust itself does not break down.
But let me be clear. Meranti+ deals with the mould on the planks. If there is still too much water going into your house, or you are still spraying other things onto the planks, it will go back the way it was after you wash. That is why the steps above cannot be skipped.
I have been in this trade sixteen years. I started out selling equipment. What I do now is mostly tell people not to buy things they do not need. That is what the MDK Swiftlet House Diagnosis Method is about. Diagnosis first, prescription second.
I wrote about plank problems in more detail in swiftlets nesting on the walls but not on the planks. If your house has sat at the same number for years, start with swiftlet house stuck at the same number. If birds are leaving in batches, read why is my swiftlet house production dropping.
Next step
Pick a day this week, go in with a torch and take three photos. One of the planks, one of the nest bases, one of the area where your misting runs heaviest.
Send them to our customer service and I will look at what is dragging your house down. You do not need to buy anything first, and it does not matter if you do not have everything. If we need more, we will ask.