How to Keep Canada Geese Out of Public Areas

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 by Fran Prisco

Each year thousands of Golf Courses, Parks, Green Belts, Back Yards, Baseball Fields and even cemeteries are inundated with messy, slippery Canada Goose droppings.   Canada Geese can be found on any type of grassy area that surrounds water, from backyard ponds, to large lakes and rivers.  They breed throughout North America. Spring migration usually starts in late winter and will take several weeks to complete.  The fall migration will begin when the water and soil begins to freeze.  Geese feed mainly on land grazing on grassy plants and our lawns.  In the spring and summer they can feed for up to 12 hours a day.  This extended feeding leads to a lot of waste; a goose produces up to a pound of droppings a day.  Multiply that by hundreds of geese and you have a big problem with goose droppings.  This can lead to public health concerns in parks, golf courses, and other public areas.

So how do we keep these pest geese off of our property?  The most effective method of goose control is to eliminate their food source.  Since we cannot tear out the lawn and shrubs, what do we do?  You make them unpalatable to the geese.  There are products on the market that use a grape derivative methyl anthranilate to flavor lawns and shrubs so that the geese do not want to eat them.  It is easily sprayed on and will grow into the plants making them unpalatable to the geese.  Once the food source is gone the geese move on to an area that will provide a more palatable food.  The goose repellent is safe to use on private and public areas.  It is a food grade substance so it will not harm other animals or people. 


A new method of controlling pest geese is a Bird Mist system. The system distributes methyl anthranilate, a grape extract proven to be effective in repelling pest birds. The extract irritates the birds’ trigeminal nerve and mucous membranes through entry in the eyes, nose or mouth. Birds do not like the sensation caused by the extract and will take flight from the area being treated. A food grade substance, the methyl anthranilate does not harm birds or other animals. This goose repellent is ideal for large open areas such as golf courses, parks, green belts and other public areas.

Other methods of goose control are sound deterrents and visual deterrents.  These are relatively inexpensive methods to deter pest geese.  They are designed to change the bird’s habits before they “settle-in” and nest for the season.  It is important to employ these products as soon as the first geese appear or even before.  If your property has been plagued with pest geese every year, than as soon as the frost is gone implement a goose control system.  Visual and sound goose deterrents are most effective when used in conjunction with the liquid goose deterrent mentioned above.  Sound deterrents will play the sound of distressed geese and predator calls to scare the geese away.  Visual deterrents include Coyote Decoys that scare the birds away; swan decoys also seem to keep the geese away.  There are also services available that use border collies to scare the geese.  This method can get costly however, as the dogs will need to come out several times before the geese leave completely.  It is best to use some sort of integrated approach to goose control.  Using a visual deterrent and the liquid goose repellent seems to work the best.