Spring will come no matter how long the Winter may seem. It is always good to be ready. Maintenance of property is indeed a year round job. Just as it’s important to clear snow in Winter, come the warmer months beaches and fields and lawns and golf courses need maintaining.
If you know wild geese will be a problem. what to you plan on doing? Answers can range from fencing to dog decoys to hunting. Government Wildlife Departments and the Humane Society continue to recommend “chasing” away the geese to keep properties from being overly polluted and conflict between humans and geese to a minimum. An effective way to do this, it is recommended is to use Border Collies.
Wild Geese do in fact in large numbers pollute water for swimmers and other wild life. Wild Geese can become confrontational especially when nesting or raising their young. Wild Geese can also imprint so strongly on properties as home territory or during migration. What do you do with hundreds of geese on a ball field or twenty on a golf green or a family of geese that likes the roped of swimming area of a lakeside summer camp?
Farmers, people who raise the food we and past peoples have eaten as long as their have been people have struggled with wildlife eating crops. Hunter Gathering people have had to keep hunted meat safe from meat eating wildlife and harvested fruit away from, lets say, rats. Modern farming of any sort needs to plan and have a program to deal with flocks of birds and grazing wild mammals.
Dogs have helped keep our food available for us to eat since we have been us. This is as unknown a fact as that draft animals made it possible to grow this food as well and get any ware faster than we can walk until relatively recent times. While I don’t think modern humans will go back much to animal traction I think dogs are a big part of many human lives. I also think that dogs can benefit us and themselves by working out solutions that are not too hard to fix with some knowledge and skill.
So, lets just jump to the modern Border Collie which descends from ancient dogs, breed to be a fine toned herding dog to farm sheep mostly, but poultry and cattle as well. These dogs have the listening ability the athleticism and will, love if you want, to work effectively with out causing harm on the farm. They save a lot of work for the farmer keeping food affordable. The Border Collies skills can be applied to wild life control. Other dog breeds can be better with other types of wild life. The working line Border Collies seem to excel with goose control.
We have had the wild goose control service for over twenty years. I maintain that being ready for Spring takes a Border Collie that is fit and practiced. In the Winter, we take our dogs for walks. We keep them used to sights and sounds and practice our herding on our sheep and poultry. All this, a good relationship with your dogs, will keep you ready when the geese fly in.
Remember you want to prevent geese from nesting or decide to addle eggs of any geese eggs on your property. This will go a way to keep your goose population from jumping. Start chasing, we call it herding, geese as soon as they fly in. This seems to take away their love for your property. All this has variable effect, it is up to you to decide on what results you want related to effort, time and money.