Being a delicacy in Chinese cuisine, bird’s nest soup is made from edible bird’s nests produced by swifts. As trading in birds’ nests is a lucrative business, swift breeding, building a house for swifts, has thrived in countries such as Malaysia and Indonesia.

To build a house for swifts, you need to take into account the following factors:

1. Availability of swifts

First of all, you need to check the area where you want to build a birdhouse, see if there are swifts. This can be done using a special detector.

2. Rental

Your birdhouse should be located outside of residential and commercial area. You may be in the middle of a palm oil plantation. It should be near bushes and jungles ideally with a river. The reason is that swifts eat, that is, insects, thrive in this type of environment. During the day, when the air near the ground warms, the insects float into the sky where swifts feed on them.

3. Structure of the house

It could be a reinforced concrete structure, a vacant house, a vacant store lot, or a stacked shipping container.

You can rent a vacant house or a vacant store lot.

Some farmers prefer to build their own birdhouse. A two story structure can cost you RM200,000. You have to get an engineer to design the structure.

A cheaper option is to use containers. You must build the lower support frame in reinforced concrete or steel structure. The container could be stacked on top of the support frame. A container can cost you around RM6,000. To maintain a stable temperature inside the container, you need to insulate the roof and the wall of the container.

4. Living environment

You should create a suitable living environment for swifts that resembles a natural cave in which it is dark and humid. For vacant houses and store lots, you should block the windows and doors to protect the light. The temperature should be kept between 28 and 30 degrees Celsius and the humidity between 75 and 85%. The coastal zone is an ideal place where the average temperature does not change abruptly.

5. Sound system

The sound system includes the equipment and recorded swift songs. It is important as the correct swift song would attract the swifts to stay in your swift house. You need two types of recorded swift songs, namely external songs to attract swifts to stay in your house and internal songs to keep the swift in the house. You should hire an experienced consultant to advise and install the sound system.

6. Hygiene

You need to keep the aviary clean. Cleaning should be done once a quarter. You may consider using some green products like enzymes to neutralize the feces.

7. Ventilation

It must be kept ventilated. The ventilation system should be cleaned weekly.

8.Security

Your sound system equipment and bird nests in the birdhouse are expensive items. Security needs to be taken into account to prevent theft. You can install CCTV or hire staff to take care of the security of your swifthouse.