A few weeks ago I arrived at a school that has had a wild goose problem periodically. I drove up next to a playing field with two of our Border Collies in the SUV. The school had recently reported to me that they were seeing a large flock of geese on this field daily. Our service with the school had been on hiatus so I triggered a “package of visits” for the school district. I parked and let Skye and Blade out of the SUV. I looked carefully at the access road we had to cross to get to the field, the geese had already seen the dogs and were on alert. This situation is where discipline comes in, the Border Collies have to listen to me and only actively herd when given the command to do so. After getting safely off the road I set Blade to one side of me and Skye on my other side. With the appropriate commands off they ran, Blade counterclockwise and Skye clockwise in large arcs to get to the other side of the flock of geese. The now very alert geese that had been grazing and pooping on the grass, all 75 or so of them, flew off just as the two Border Collies reached the flock’s far side, in effect, herding them into the sky.
Different goose control “jobs” or “situations” and let’s say, clients, call for different ways of operating. The different environments we work in range from golf courses to town parks to corporate campuses to homeowners properties. How we work with our Border Collies on these properties depends on the activities taking place and how severe the problem is. “The problem” very much is in the mind of the client, but we help decide the right course of action, by coming up with a plan, how and when to schedule visits to herd the geese, away. Some of our clients want or need “coverage” to get results in the spring only. Some clients have geese show up in numbers in the summer, think, summer camps. We usually have good results with our trained dogs, we have one rehomed mix breed, see the “Our Dogs Page” with just three visits a week. Some clients require only two visits a week when their situation is not a big issue. If you are planning goose control with your own dog think about what your highly motivated dog will do once you have few to no geese.
There are, of course, several ways to “deal with” a population of geese that are “causing an issue”. Don’t forget that you can legally addle the eggs of the wild geese. This is an effective way to keep the geese population down on a property. Laser lights and blanks from guns as well as dog and coyote decoys all can be deployed. I have seen all these methods being used as well as shrub growth and fencing by waterways. These last two methods work if geese do not fly over them. And I should note that our service with dogs is more effective for one industrial client than a nearby property that shoots the geese. This may come as a surprise but if you think about the age-old relationship between land predators and waterfowl it may make sense. Using Border Collies to herd geese “away” over a period of time makes the wild geese think that a “property” is “unsafe” for them. The real-life “working” dogs seem more effective than decoy dogs and coyotes. After these decoys are set up on a property we usually see geese grazing contentedly nearby undisturbed.