Aroma Magic 燕香气魔法

About 10 years ago when I jumped into swiftlet farming, there was no such aroma technique in swiftlet farming, aroma only started appearing in the market about two-three years ago. How we did in the old day is to apply bird’s dropping to the new BH, and later we also applied ammonia to enhance the effect and life span. The objective is to create a swiftlet living environment with the smell it supposed to have for birds feel comfortable to stay, this is referred as environmental aroma. Yet this method is still my standard practice for new BH, I believe for many swiftlet farmer as well. As this has been proven effective over years validation.

But lately there is another type of aroma, which more referred as plank aroma, which can apply directly to the nesting plank, and claims it would make birds stay and mate. In fact what I did for plank aroma with the natural way in the old day is to blend those broken nest and applied to the plank. Nowadays more and more brand being launched to the market commercially from many swiftlet farming master, but the effectiveness still questionable without solid proof. As a swiftlet farmer with my technical background, effectiveness as claimed should always be validated. I have actually tested a few famous bands of aroma in my BH, the outcome is that populated corner still grow steady, unoccupied corner still empty after few months, there is no significant difference. And a lot of newbie friends told me that they applied those famous aromas in their sick BH, but after few months still nothing happened.

At this moment, I can only conclude that if your BH is fulfilling those primary criteria, i.e. good location, right design, good sound, right microhabitat and good management, without secondary factor like aroma it can also succeed, otherwise aroma itself will NEVER MAKE MAGIC to your fail BH. Always remember the priority, get the primary factors right first before the secondary. Whether aroma will boost in populating those old farm, yet it still need more experiments and data to validate.

大约十年前，当我进入养燕时，并没有燕香气这东西，它是在两三年前才在市场上出现。当时我们都只是将鸟粪放到新的燕屋，后来我们也利用氨(ammonia)来加强和加长鸟粪效果。目地是要建立一个燕子生活环境该有的味道，让燕子感觉自然和舒适而居住下来。这种方法至今仍然是我对新燕屋一贯的做法，我相信许多燕农也是如此，因为这做法已采用多年且证实是有效的。

但最近世面上有另一种燕香气，是燕板用的燕香气，可以向燕板直接喷洒，它声称可以留鸟和促使燕子交配。其实多年前我对燕板做法是把碎的燕窝用绞碎机打溶掉，然后喷洒燕板。现在越来越多的燕香气在向市场推出，但其效果仍然都没有真正被验证。因为我拥用技术背景的关系，产品效果印证是必要的，其实我之前已经在我的燕屋对世面上著名的几种燕香气做了测试，其结果是燕群角落仍然继续稳定增长，没燕窝角落几个月后仍然空置的，没有显着差异。和很多的新手朋友告诉我，他们在失败燕屋使用那些著名的燕香气，但经过数个月仍然任何没有动静。

目前我只能做此结论，如果你的燕屋是根据主要的基本元素，即良好的地点，正确的设计，好的声音，拥有标准燕子生态环境和良好的管理，即使没有次要元素即燕香味也可以很成功，否则燕香气不会对失败的燕屋有任何奇迹的魔法。一定要记住次序，把主要的元素搞好才轮到次要的。燕香气是否会促进燕农场的燕群成长，仍然需要更多的实验和数据来验证。