Will swans chase away geese?

My mute swan hates geese, and chases them until they fly off the pond.

In a town I once lived in they brought in a pair of swans to hopefully keep down the goose population. The geese had gotten out of control because everyone in town would feed them bread so they never left! Can't really say it worked, though. I guess they should have done it sooner and bought more swans.

Black swans are more tolerant of other fowl, but white swans and others do not like to share their water. I would get an adult pair, as babys raised with other fowl would defeat the purpose.

I absolutley, positively, guarantee that you would not welcome those masked Canadian terrorists if you owned and lived on waterfront property. I live on a lakefront property, and have a picnic area right on the waterfront with a beautiful lawn that took much time and $ to keep. As few as 4 or 5 of these winged beasts from hell can turn a postcard landscape into a toxic waste dump in a matter of days. They eat every blade of grass down to bare dirt, and leave piles of greasy green stink nuggets on every square inch of ground. Once they "claim" a piece of land, every method of deterrant will fail, short of sending them to the big pond in the sky. If you scream and throw rocks at them, they leave only to return 5 minutes later with friends. One year, I put stakes in the ground along the entire waterfront, and ran plastic yellow caution tape along the stakes to try to fence them off. The next day it looked like an actual crime scene down there, complete with yellow tape. Well, the tape that was left after they tore most of it down and made nesting material with it!!!

As far as the swans holding them off, well I don't know. I think bringing in "giant white geese" with bad attitudes would be like burning your house down to kill the termites. However, I do own a pair of Sebastopol geese that are very territorial, and have done a good job keeping the canucks away last sumer, but this years plague hasn't arrived yet.

I LOVE Canadian Geese................................................dead ones...................

Yep.. talk to the city and see if a few days during the hunting season they can be shot. There is a local sod farm within city limits and they are allowed to shoot a couple days each fall... They just have to be shooting a certain direction and so far away from houses. Give me a call, I'd love to help out!

Travis

I love my Canadian geese......... but I do understand they can be real problems in numbers.

This post absolutely made me laugh! I did my undergraduate and masters degrees at Edinboro University (about 10 miles south of Lake Erie in Pennsylvania) - our campus has a fake lake. Well, the geese loved our little fake lake, and what a MESS! During breeding season, you had to take the "long way" to classes - because they not only claimed the water and the field, but the sidewalk too! Unless you wanted shoes covered in poo, a broken arm or bruised legs from nasty ganders, you avoided that sidewalk! It was like walking amongst a mass of green land mines! I've had geese before - they are messy - but they were confined. Unrestricted breeding "Canadian Terrorists" as you call them, are no cup of tea...

Swans have been known to actually kill geese. If they get a good enough grip on the goose, its in trouble. Yes, swans put a woopin of geese.

Uh, um, well sometimes they like each other........My swan and his wild friends get along fine.  Right now there are a pair of Canada Geese, an American Coot and a Shoveler sharing the pond with him and this is the time of year they would be most territorial so I think it depends on the individual.

This is my mute swan, Barry.



I'd guess that he tolerates these invaders because the pond has plenty of space but they don't avoid each other or squabble.