The concept of goose control comes from how our food is grown for us. Actually, on our Homestead, we practice this ancient craft of producing food. We raise gardens of vegetables and have chickens and ducks and sheep. If there are predators around like coyotes, wolves, and fox the farm animals are not safe unless they are well confined. Vegetables are susceptible to rabbit, dear, groundhog, squirrel, and even chipmunk damage. That last one may sound funny to you, but anyone who is trying to grow seed for next year’s crop or for sale can not do so with chipmunks getting into the gardens. There is lethal protection of your food source and there is nonlethal. Of course, farmers can employ methods that help foil wildlife like good fences, expensive, and rotation of crops etc. You can choose not to raise animals, but then how could there be organic farming without animals? There is guano but that ship has sailed to good effect a long time ago.
The use of dogs to protect the gardens and farms has been in practice on farms since ancient times. Dig out an old episode of Lassie and watch it. After being shamed by pop culture jokes a while back Lassie became a joke. But that show will give you a picture of what a good farm dog can do to keep a farm from going bust. Yes, I feel personally safer in our country home with our dogs around, though our dogs have not saved anyone from falling into a well,(old SNL joke). In many countries around the world and at a farm near you a good dog, perhaps a guardian breed is keeping your food safe. Herding dogs like our Border Collies are less inclined to “guard” because they were developed as a breed in the UK which has not had preditors in a long time.
The concept is simple. People in every continent would draw an imaginary circle around where they wanted to raise food and “haze”, “chase” shoo” ( you choose a word or style) any wildlife that came inside that circle. There is an exhibit in the New York State Museum in Albany which shows Native Women and Childen standing guard in a field of corn, squash, and beans with noisemakers and a dog. You will be very lucky to find people to do that work today, so in a farm situation, a good dog keeps watch for wild birds that may be taking all your chickens food or the fox that may want to eat those chickens. There are countless other types of wildlife encounters that a farm dog will encounter over the life of its’ career. This farm dog experience can be applied to geese showing up in large numbers on school fields or town parks. Or when it comes to geese nesting at doorways to buildings and instinctually keeping everyone from entering, that is were “goose control” comes in.
Why Border Collies for goose control? Yes, as I said Border Collies are not guard dogs. Border Collies for goose control is a program of “modified herding” geese from fields, parks, golf courses, and corporate parks, using the collies’ herding instincts. Border Collies are one of the very few breeds of dogs anymore that have instincts to “work.” They listen to their handlers if properly trained and will work effectively safely and humanely for the job at hand. The whole thing is a “mind game”, the geese think a predator is about. The Border Collies’ instincts are to have sheep, cattle, and geese, chickens too, react to an “artificial predator” and cause no harm in moving sheep to a desired place on a farm or geese off a property. Border Collies herd farm animals( livestock). We at Wild Goose Chase NE “modify-herd geese from properties, teaching geese to think there are better places to be.