21-Jun-2006

I’m employed at an agricultural collage a work in the Dairy unit.

Over the years we have had enormous trouble with magpie geese, which are oddly enough protected.

With Magpie geese and ducks destroying our crops the University had to come up with a solution.

Geese and ducks can wipe out an area of approximately 9 hectares in one morning.

Needless to say with bird numbers around 300, just with Geese alone this can result in devastating losses and damages and more when you include Ducks.

When arriving at the paddocks you would witness a sea of black and white geese instead of black and white cows.

The collages first attempt at controlling these birds was to have a trial of two Border Collies (6 months old) to patrol the paddocks barking.

Well that was a dismal failure, they were forever trying to keep the dogs in the paddock (even though electric collars were used).

The student doing the trial was supposed to know how to train the dogs, but apart from constantly escaping, they never barked, were terrified on the cattle, refused to come out of their kennels or were running wild around campus.

Naturally within a month they were gone.

That’s when I decided to give Turraminna Midnight Mist (Misty) a go.

I started coaching her in the fine art of chasing those back and white geese. ( she herself only 6 months).

After milking I would take her down to the paddock where the birds were, not that the geese looked concerned at first.

I had been teaching her to bark on command so getting her going wasn’t hard.

To begin with I would give a whistle for pushing up the cows, and then give the command to bark.

Off Misty would race, stalking them first then like lightening off she’d fly yapping until all birds were gone.

Today there are no given commands, as soon as I finished milking, off she goes to vacate the birds.

I do on odd occasions say “where’s the geese” and she immediately start to seek them out.

I now have the three Koolies doing it as a daily chore, and we have the geese under control.

The birds are only there for brief periods of time and mostly in the trees, not in the pasture.

Misty if I’m feeding out, uses the tractor for cover and if a bird happens to land, she’s into them, she also uses the car or bike in the same way.

So now when geese season approaches the Koolies are in great demand, and thanks to them the cows have pasture to feed.