In parts #1 to #3 I covered how to train and work with the Border Collies. Without knowing what you are doing with these dogs, all the effort will come to little but aggravation and a lot of wasted time and money. It is essential to do the leg work, the homework with Border Collies. Get experienced advice and take lessons and get the right direction.
As we move into this years goose control season, I realize I put more and more importance in coordination. I think that the clients we have that coordinate with us to a good end, get better results. We also now have prospective clients who are considering and one arranged group of clients that are putting multiple adjacent properties together in a “goose control plan”. I can not tell you how much this excites me. Geese don’t recognize property lines of course. So, getting neighbors to work together should produce even better results with goose control.
We do actually limit the presence of geese on the neighbor’s properties of our clients. It takes effort and knowledge to convince geese on say, a lawn way over there, that they should leave, without our Border Collies stepping foot on that property, but it can happen. Of course, goose control with Border Collies should be done with safety in mind. Parking lots, roads, bodies of water, fishermen, walkers, walkers with dogs, kids on bikes, baby carriages and on and on, these are all variables to take into account when chasing, or as I say, herd-chasing geese, when a job is first proposed it is good to ask a client about factors that will need to be worked around.
Property owners with nuisance geese populations may have tried, or you may have tried, different ways to keep geese off. And if you are considering the several different ways to do this, ask around on effectiveness. The internet is full of suggestions like natural barriers and fencing, spraying the grass, dog and coyote decoys and shooting blanks, as well as hunting and involving the US Fish and Wildlife to round up the geese during the molt. Some of these methods are effective, some only partly or work for a limited time frame. Of course, there is egg addling, for the nests, done with a legal government permit, this I recommend.
It is always a good idea to know what time of day the geese seem to most frequent a property. Very often the answer to this question is, “all the time.” But that will change with good herd-chasing and adjusting to changing behavior is important. Very often geese will show up when a property is quiet when not too many people about. Visiting with the dogs, at dawn and or dusk, often shows good results.
We have clients who chase the geese they have when we are not active on their properties on our “off days”. We usually arrange to visit on a three days a week schedule. This schedule keeps costs down and usually is effective to get geese to greatly limit their presence on a property. Results can happen quicker with the clients personal helping. But, a big but, their efforts need to be convincing to the geese. There is nothing more damaging to goose control efforts than an effort that the geese do not respect. Effective goose control, of course, takes coordination.
Another important step to take with goose control is informing employees or residents of the effort. In some cases, there is a push back against goose control. Explaining the need and the process often is better than trying to go under the radar. Informing people in newsletters and a little effort to communicate one on one by the clients “managers” or personal and our handlers usually goes a long way to turning the tide of any negative views. There are those folk who think the only way is to blast the geese out of the sky. And there are those who think the geese should be left totally alone. But then, when a school playing field or playground ends up with fifty to hundred geese or more and the poop is “wall to wall,” and aggressive male geese start up in Spring, something has to be done.