Metamorphosis - from old school of thought to new one

From my own personal study and research, there are generally two schools of thought in swiftlet farming i.e the traditional old and the high-tech orientated new. The former is originated from Indonesia and have been practised by our Malaysian pioneers for more than a decade. The latter's history is less than 5 years. It’s kind of metamorphosis, evolving and transforming from the old teaching with the aim to improve upon it. Somehow the recent development taken place has gone so far until we doubt it really capable of bringing us to the next higher level in producing cost-efficient yet successful BH.

Conventional gurus do not emphasize much on using humidifier, hygrostat, aroma, corner board, and any other costly & high-maintenance-cost apparatus & equipment. They stress more on the importance of "design" whereas high-tech sifus are on the contrary. High-tech sifus always claim and believe that with the aid of advanced technology, we can achieve fast and good result within a shorter duration. Question is: how reliable will be the new technology and products? Given that some of them are still under pilot-testing period and will they bring about adverse effect to the BH? That is for the BH owners to find out from time to time.

However, personally I feel that old concept does not mean that it is obsolete and slow in producing promising result. It exhibits value engineering, optimization of materials and enhancement of BH by taking into account of all existing circumstances & conditions of the BH. Apart from these, there are quite a lot of differences which I am unable to describe in detail. Will share with you if time permits.

Traditional & high-tech sifus cannot & will not sit down together and see eyes to eyes among themselves. However, for the sake of "cari makan", all does obey to one unwritten or implied rule that no one will put sand to other's rice bowls, everyone will have their piece of cake, you have yours and I have mine. As a result of this, you will not be surprised to find out that all these years so many newbies were taken for a ride and yet hardly righteous and truthful sifu dare to stand out to stop those black hats and their wrong-practices.

For me, I feel comfortable to choose to follow the middle path. I do not advocate the extremes. It is just like the principle of cooking, too much salt and sugar will spoil the good taste of food.

I will give importance to the BH design, will use bird shit but not aroma, will use fake nest but not corner board, will use humidifier but not costly misty humidifier, will use timer but not hygrostat, will clean the BH with water but not ammonia (conventional sifu does not even clean the BH at all-they just sweep with broom only), will use hygrometer but not infra red thermometer, will not use expensive insulation material unless really necessary, and so on.

I have my own justifiable reasons to all the above. I do not follow 100% the old guards’ teaching, but I agree that they are better than the high-tech sifus, at least they do not force newbies use purposeless equipment and they show more willingness to share the knowledge than the latter, which are more of "no money no talk".

Again the above is just my own personal findings and views. All offence is unintended. It is for fun reading. Hope you will find it useful.