中文 (中国)Feather Nest
Feather swiftlet is a kind of cave swiftlet, with places of origin in Thailand, Indonesia, Sabah and Sarawak in Malaysia. Caves with bird’s nests in Sabah and Sarawak are found in national parks, forest reserves, coastal islands, Niah and Baram. Feather swiftlets are nests made by Mascarene swiftlets. These kind of swiftlets like to build their nests using feathers glued by their saliva (on average, one nest contains 10% to 50% of feathers). When the swiftlet builds its nest, it glues the feathers using their saliva to ensure its sturdiness to protect its young. After the worker collects the bird’s nest, he will remove the feathers from the nest to beautify its appearance. However, some traders do not remove the feathers before selling it, and we call these products as feather nest. Nests built by other species of swiftlets that contain a lot of feathers and impurities due to lack of saliva are also categorized as feather nests. The thickness of the nest varies according to its place of origin, but the colour of the nest is generally darker with more impurities, especially feathers. As such, the processing of feather nest is more complicated. Feather nest from Hoi An, Vietnam is of the best quality. However, production is scarce and hence, it is very valuable.
Feather nest is the unprocessed raw material of bird’s nest. It will be a good quality bird’s nest after cleansing and processing. Our company owns a number of farmhouses and produces our own feather nest and raw materials, ensuring stable production.
The manager of the farmhouses will only remove the bird’s nest after the eggs have hatched. These nests that are picked directly from the farmhouses are feather nests and contain lots of impurities and feathers, and are required to be cleaned and processed.
Each feather nest will be selected carefully based on its shape (calyx, flat base, round base, triangular, straight), size, level of impurities component, colour and other factors and categorized accordingly. Thereafter, they will be cleansed in the processing plant and produced into bird’s nest cup, bird’s nest strips and bird’s nest cake etc.
Basically, feather nest can be further categorized into three main categories based on the overall feather residue and level of impurities:
Light feather
Feathers are found in five to six parts of the bird’s nest
Medium feather
Feathers are found in approximately twenty parts of the bird’s nest
Heavy feather
Feathers are found in most parts of the bird’s nest