Has anyone dealt with geese invading your property?

[eliza22]

We have a small nature preserve behind our property and they have a nest. As of yesterday they are coming into our fenced backyard and hissing and flying at our small dogs. My kids can't play outside because of them at this point. Dh was able to chase them off with the hose yesterday but they are not afraid of people and will fly at us. We don't want to do anything to harm them or anything illegal but this is a real problem .
We are also trying to sell our house and don't need them chasing off potential buyers.
Animal Control's website says they don't remove or deal with wildlife unless it's a human threat.

[aweilba]

My parents house is along a lake, and there are ALWAYS geese or ducks in their yard.  The good news is that they have a hunting dog (Gemma) who chases them off the property, but they literally sit right on the other side of their fence when Gemma is outside; when she's not outside, they're all up in the yard.  There's always geese and duck poop in the yard, and one year, a goose even built her nest inside the fence.  My dad put chicken wire around it so Gemma wouldn't kill the babies, though.  My dad doesn't mind that they're in his yard because he loves ducks and geese, but my mom and I hate it.  I guess I don't really have an answer for you, just sympathy.  I wonder if you could give Animal Control a call to ask for suggestions?  Maybe there are some sort of visual deterrents you could put up, like a scarecrow, but for geese?

[treedimensional]

Apr 14, 2013 8:20:00 GMT -5 eliza22 said:

You have just described a human threat.
Geese are not only a public nuisance, but a serious public health issue. I've worked with municipalities and community groups dealing with geese before, and science is most definitely on your side.
Geese are very destructive. They make public greenspaces unusable, and they foul water.
They defecate every 20 minutes, and make about one and a half pounds of shit a day.
As a landowner, you have a right to expect to be able to USE your property and your children have a right to not die from e.coli in their own backyard.

A word of advice- if you're fighting this fight, there will be a LOT of people who'll come out in support of cute baby geese, with nostalgic stories of how much they cherish memories of feeding geese when they were children, and how they turned out okay, and how their kids shall not be deprived of this magical rite of passage. It helps to know the political decision makers beforehand.

[seriously]

Our old house was on a pond and we had tons of Canda geese. I hate , hate , hate those loud obnoxious pooping machines! My husband would chase them away with a large broom for a while, then (note probaly not the smartest) he and a lot of our neighbors got BB guns and would shoot at them. It didn't kill them or even really hurt them, it would just sting a little. They would then run/walk/fly off. It got to the point if my husband stepped outside they would take off. Not a fool proof plan but it helped.

[Susie]

My parents do; they live on a lake.

My dad made a life sized silhouette of their golden retriever out of plywood and mounted it in the yard. That combined with the actual dog being out there frequently enough helped some.

[eliza22]

Apr 14, 2013 10:19:27 GMT -5 treedimensional said:

Apr 14, 2013 8:20:00 GMT -5 eliza22 said:

You have just described a human threat.
Geese are not only a public nuisance, but a serious public health issue. I've worked with municipalities and community groups dealing with geese before, and science is most definitely on your side.
Geese are very destructive. They make public greenspaces unusable, and they foul water.
They defecate every 20 minutes, and make about one and a half pounds of shit a day.
As a landowner, you have a right to expect to be able to USE your property and your children have a right to not die from e.coli in their own backyard.

A word of advice- if you're fighting this fight, there will be a LOT of people who'll come out in support of cute baby geese, with nostalgic stories of how much they cherish memories of feeding geese when they were children, and how they turned out okay, and how their kids shall not be deprived of this magical rite of passage. It helps to know the political decision makers beforehand.

[eliza22]

Sorry my quote failed but thanks for the info treedimensional. I had no idea!

We are going to call animal control tomorrow and see what they say. We've lived here for 8 years and this is the first time it has become an issue. The timing is just horrible since we are selling and I'd like to resolve it asap.
Thanks again!

[Deleted]

Animal COntrol doesn't really deal with nondomesticated creatures at least around here.
Call your DNR explain just what you did here and ask them to come talk care of it as it is a human threat.
We don't have geese problems but we have turkey issues and the DNR has actually been quite helpful.

[susieq]

My parents have had good luck with a wolf cutout in their yard. They move it every few days but the geese seem to stay off of their property more so than the people that live a few doors down.

[jhawks482]

How are they getting into your fenced backyard? Are they flying over or getting through the rails? If they are stepping through the rails, you could intertwine some fishing string, a row or two, up two feet high or so. I've seen many neighborhoods put up fishing string along the backyards that line the lakes for this reason.
That sucks that it's happening when you are selling (and that you cant let your kids outside!), but nesting geese are extremely aggressive. They aren't nearly as aggressive (they won't attack) if they aren't protecting young. Funny story, but a few days ago a zookeeper at our local zoo caught a video of a nesting goose attacking a large male gorilla for getting to close to her nest. The gorilla ran off and was terrified, poor thing! Apparently it's making it's rounds on YouTube. And lastly, for what it's worth, I would not be turned off if I was looking at your house and saw geese nesting or in your backyard.

[SusanBAnthony]

Oh that would make me mad. We were at the zoo last week and one came right up to DS and started trying to bite his legs. The kids were totally freaked out.

D you live somewhere that it is legal to just shoot them (I mean to kill, btw, not just to scare them). If it is legal and you have the skills to do it safely, I would just kill as many as I could. Says the vegetarian. By which I mean that *I* wouldn't shoot them, but I would make H! Or, if you know where there nest is could you get rid of the nest,MIF the eggs haven't hatched yet? If the nest is outside of your yard, I don't know if it is legal, on the other hand, they aren't a protected species or anything. I am not advocating doing anything illegals, of course, wink wink, but if I would just get rid of the nest if that was a possibility. Might take a team attack, borrow some big dogs, go out there with brooms and rakes and whatnot.

[IIOY]

Apr 14, 2013 9:08:35 GMT -5 aweilba said:

My parents house is along a lake, and there are ALWAYS geese or ducks in their yard.  The good news is that they have a hunting dog (Gemma) who chases them off the property, but they literally sit right on the other side of their fence when Gemma is outside; when she's not outside, they're all up in the yard.  There's always geese and duck poop in the yard, and one year, a goose even built her nest inside the fence.  My dad put chicken wire around it so Gemma wouldn't kill the babies, though.  My dad doesn't mind that they're in his yard because he loves ducks and geese, but my mom and I hate it.  I guess I don't really have an answer for you, just sympathy.  I wonder if you could give Animal Control a call to ask for suggestions?  Maybe there are some sort of visual deterrents you could put up, like a scarecrow, but for geese?

At the risk of hijacking this thread, today I spotted a duck wandering on our property.  It's the first time I've ever seen a duck here (we've been in the house for over 8 years) and I scared him away when I opened our sliding glass door.  He was under one of our trees, working on something as though he was tugging.

Do I need to be concerned in the long-term or was this likely a one-off?  We have no standing body of water close to our house, however, when he flew off, another duck suddenly appeared in the sky with him.

[SusanBAnthony]

IIOY, In our neighborhood in MN, 2 ducks would visit for about a month every spring. There was a lake about a mile away, but other than that nothing and we were in the middle of Mpls. Very bizarre. They were friendly non-destructive ducks.

[FoxInFiji]

We have geese on our land but they are not a problem. We're in the country and have just under 3 acres. About 1 acre of that are the 1-1/2 ponds we own (our property line runs through the smaller pond). We do not have any issue with them coming on to our lawn because they have lots of other space to be. There is an "island" between the two ponds that is always dry and wetlands on either side of that (that are sometimes flooded into one big pond with a true island). Every year we have the first set of geese on the pond. Those ones are more dominate and won't let any other geese on either of the two ponds. The male stays in the middle of the ponds and chases everyone else away all day long. Then after their offspring have hatched and left we get the second stringers who are more willing to have more than one nesting pair on the ponds because they just want to nest before spring is done. Right after the first set of geese hatch we'll briefly see them on the 12' untouched grassy area between our mowed lawn and the pond but the dog is not a fan. She smells them and goes and marks all over that area and they never come back. They have safer places to be with no human or dog smell so they chose that over our lawn.

It's also worth noting our geese are still scared of humans and will swim away or move to the other pond if we're outside. They also share the ponds nicely with the many ducks we have each year. They ignore each other basically. Last year we had 9 baby geese, 10 baby wood ducks, and 17 baby mallards throughout the spring and early summer. So there is a lot of activity!

[eliza22]

Dh talked to animal control and they said we need to find exactly whose property the nest is on (apparently even though its a nature preserve there are property lines) and get their permission to destroy and then hire someone to do the job. I'm not sure what it entails exactly but there are local companies that specialize.

The nest is definitely not on our property so this may be a real hassle. We are going to discuss it after dh is done working.

I've heard putting fencing around watercan deter them but they just fly over our fence. I may go buy a few windsocks tonight to put out there and hopefully discourage them.