Geese Be Gone!

 

Wild Goose Chase of La Grange, Ill. uses border collies, like Maggie Mae here, to chase Canada geese from golf courses and parks. Photo: Rick Wood/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

With a single goose depositing up to three pounds of waste each day, goose control is a serious problem. Other areas deal with migrating coots. Superintendents have used dogs, trapping, birth control, firing blanks and other measures. One enterprising groundskeeper at West Nyack, N.Y. has found a new way to handle bothersome birds, however.

Visitors are often left scratching their heads when they see groundskeepers sending radio-controlled mini-all-terrain vehicles out across school grounds.

“Everybody goes, ‘It’s a joke, right?’ ” Joel Morales, groundskeeper and hobbyist, told the Journal News of Westchester, N.Y.

Professional Bird Control

Others are combining methods and offering professional bird-control service.

Wild Goose Chase Inc. uses dogs, remote-controlled boats and laser pointers to harass geese into flying away. The La Grange, Ill., firm has nearly 140 clients, among them Milwaukee County, local golf courses and housing complexes.

The company uses trained border collies to herd the geese, which typically waddle into a nearby pond. Employees then use remote-controlled boats to harass them into flying away. At night, employees flash harmless laser pointers, which confuse the geese enough that they take off.

Federal Regulations

Canada geese are protected by the Migratory Bird Treaty Act of 1918. Under the act, it is illegal to “pursue, hunt, take, capture, kill or sell” the birds, and the law also protects nests and eggs. But the state offers permits to organizations that manage geese populations without harming the birds.

The permits also allow, with strict limits, approved methods of egg “addling,” techniques that prevent eggs from hatching. Wild Goose Chase addles eggs, an average of six per nest, by covering them with a layer of corn oil to prevent oxygen transfer and arrest embryo development. If eggs are removed completely, the geese will produce more, but with addling, the geese simply abandon the nest when the eggs don’t hatch on time. The geese are then more likely to find a different nesting site the following year.

A groundskeeper uses radio-controlled trucks similar to this one to chase geese from a community college campus in West Nyack, N.Y.

Animal rights groups seem to approve of egg addling.
“We don’t oppose it, but if you use border collies prior to the geese laying eggs, you won’t have to addle them,” Sharon Pawlak of the Coalition to Prevent the Destruction of Canada Geese told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.