Photo Album: Canada Geese at College Campus

William Patterson University has a magnificent campus with beautiful landscaping that naturally attracted these geese.  In the past, they just dealt with it like everybody else.  There are "geese police" who patrol with border collies to make their lives miserable so they at least go away temporarily.  Again, you can't kill them.  You can't collect them.  All you can do is harass the geese so they relocate to someone else's property. This year Bird Solutions by Cowleys took a different approach.  They applied for a federal permit to addle the goose eggs. Addling?  It's not ridiculing the eggs and calling them bad names to get them all riled up so their yolk explodes. Rather, every 2 weeks or so, our wildlife technicians went on a wild goose hunt. They found the nest, gently moved the geese, and coated their eggs with corn oil. They walked the pond's perimeters and kayaked around the edges until all the nests and eggs were located.  And we even paid them while having so much fun! Addling the eggs will not allow the eggs to develop and produce goslings. This is considered extremely humane since no live geese are hurt or killed. The mother goose will continue to sit on eggs and will not lay additional ones which would be the case if the eggs were destroyed. It was a huge success.  The geese population stopped growing.  The geese population is still there, but now the numbers are manageable.  Most importantly, no geese were harmed. The students and faculty have breached a collective sigh of relief.  We received many words of thanks and appreciation from many on campus for no longer being chased by geese as they go to and from their cars, and to and from their dorms and classrooms.