Town using Border collies to frighten away Canada geese

BLOOMFIELD, NJ — In an effort to keep down the geese population in Bloomfield, the Board of Health is employing a vendor that uses Border collies to scare the birds, hopefully into another municipality far,far away. This effort is in conjunction with coating the eggs with corn oil by the Public Works Department. The name of the vendor providing the dogs is Geese Chasers.

“The effort has to be ongoing,” said Health Department Director Karen Lore. “Some of the surrounding towns use Geese Chasers. If Bloomfield and nearby towns do it, it’s more effective.”

The Health Department went to the dogs in late April. Brookside Park and the playing fields of the middle school, right near Clarks Pond, were big hangouts for the birds. At both locations, 70 geese, for a total of 140, were counted on April 25, Lore said.

By the end of May, Brookside Park had only two geese families. But there were also a dozen goslin, or baby geese, counted. With the young present, Lore said the collies are tethered or called off the chase.

“The idea is not to harm the birds,” she said.
Also spotted were numerous people feeding the birds.
“That contributes to the problem,” Lore said.

She added that it is a violation of Bloomfield law to feed the geese.
There were also 10 geese spotted in Memorial Park and only a few in Foley Field, but they are now gone. Wright’s Field had two birds, but they are gone, too.

“There was a problem in Fort Lee with the geese just taking over,” Lore said. “If you don’t have animal control, you’re going to have a problem. And with goslings, adult geese can become very protective. A lot of people complain about the number of geese and the waste.”

Brooke Bello, an owner of Geese Chasers, said the dogs go out in the morning and then in the afternoon. There is one dog per handler. At the beginning of the effort, two dogs were needed at the middle school but that is now down to one dog.
“The Bloomfield park system has never really done anything about these geese,” she said.

Bello said the geese in Bloomfield were comfortable because they have never been bothered. But Border collies bother them. Bello said the geese react to the dogs has if they were a predator.

“The collies creep down on them,” she said. “The goose knows it’s not being approached by an ordinary dog. If the goose doesn’t move, the dog lays down. It’s trained not to harm the goose.

Public Works and Parks Director Anthony Nesto, whose department is responsible for applying oil to goose eggs, said it is applied by hand. The shell of an egg is porous. Coating an egg with oil stop the development of the chick embryo.
“It is smeared all over the egg,” he said in an email. “Rubber gloves are worn.”

The big hangouts for the birds, according to Nesto, is the Clarks Pond area, the duck pond on Hoover Avenue, and Brookside Park. To a lesser degree, the geese congregate on the Third River behind the McDonald’s on Broad Street, and also in areas near Kinder Towers.

He said a goose egg is about three times the size of a chicken egg. Bloomfield has been oiling the eggs since 2009. He has no idea what the township population of geese can be but he knows the birds are Canada geese.
“They love Bloomfield, NJ,” he said.