Customer has pigeons in an outbuilding loft of sorts, It doesnt seem to feasible to exclude them, I was wondering if you had any succsess with hazing with lazer pointers or anything like that.

Or is there anything else I may be missing?

.22 air rifle. Lots of fun and good money.

I do have pellet guns, but will that be that effective at controlling the population?

Good way of getting supper paid for

Don't know how feasible is would be for you but I started my business by live trapping pigeons for a city. I charged by the bird and

then sold them all to dog trainers. Who knew pigeons could be that valuable?

P.S. I friend of mine recently Benjamined nearly a thousand of them.

And is that really a reliable solution?

You seem to have tossed out THE reliable solution when you said NO to exclusion. People spend a lot of money on trapping and/or shooting programs, and never get the desired result. Make sure they know UP FRONT that anything other than netting or exclusion is temporary.... not a solution. Treating a symptom instead of solving a problem. As long as the client knows, it's "their" decision to spend money that should be applied to exclusion work instead.

BTW.... I've done MANY large net jobs after companies, large corporations and/or large farmers have spent 10 to 15 thousand dollars or more over a few years, never getting the desired result. Most big companies have "their people" who can crunch the numbers, and will typically approve the solution over a band-aid.

BUT.... Always remember there are situations that have no solution, due to structure design or other factors. Best to walk away and not fail than to "try" to help them. Ends up costing them money, but costs your reputation.

Agree with ron...always stress the exclusion as it is an investment....

If u are to do shooting...shoot as many as u can first couple days...they will get used to you and see ya coming after that

Ron, that's exactly what I thought.

Bird spikes would be an option but the cost would be thousands. Way to much for this homeowners trailer

Our "reliable solution" seems to have been the destruction of barn silos and the importing of peregrine falcons. I would not be

surprised if we have 90% less pigeons now than when I was a kid. A lot of AA target loads passed through the old Browning in an

effort to downsize the population. Those were the good old days when you could get buried in pigeon poop.

In my experience:

Pigeons are very intelligent. My bird feeders were swarmed by sky carp, but you only have to kill a few, and they will get the hint and move out, especially if you have a couple a few flopping around on the ground. You will have to do some follow-ups, but it works. Haven't seen a pigeon around here in 25+ years, and the apartments nearby are loaded.

AND, you can use your favorite Dove recipe.

scoped RWS 45, in .17 cal.

A couple of times I had a Red Tail Hawk swoop down and snatch the floppers for an easy meal.

Personally nothing against lethal removal of pigeons if you find it fits your scenario and your clients desires, budget, etc...

Otherwise I'm 1000% with Ron on this issue. I have acquired work where folks for years and years spent monthly budgets
removing birds, on top of that they had to pay for clean up as the mess from all of the pigeons showing up and later being removed
after they've left droppings adds up.

All that cost versus exclusion (when possible).

Recently I acquired a commercial contract that I visited with Eric Arnold some time ago about. The manager had told me they paid every
6 months to remove droppings from a structure that ran them $3,500 + per go round. So more than $7K per year to not resolve the issue
long term but to do the band aid and remove the droppings to avoid structural damage or failure.

Exclusion with the materials available yields a massive win fiscally with a single outlay that will provide 10+ years of net exclusion on this
case.

Now every scenario isn't the same but I'm also with Ron on the idea that band aids can result in too many calls back and I favor if you are calling
me back it is to give me a referral, tell me good job or let me know I have a small warranty repair.

____

Some structures are too expensive or will aren't built in a way that exclusion is always feasible, we all know that, but definitely weigh out the outcome
versus the expectations of the client if going down the lethal removal road.

I've had more pest control companies dump me their commercial clients as the clients got sick of constantly paying for bird removal when the issues
were always lingering and malingering.

.02.....

We are constantly doing exclusions and as usual Ron and HD are correct. I do believe that removing over a thousand pigeons for the

city was the right thing for me to do however. You don't exclude a thousand pigeons; you move them to another part of the same small

city. Thanks to some better house keeping methods, that city has never had such a severe pigeon population since. And again, it was

the bulldozing of large silos and the introduction of falcons that has kept the population manageable. I kind of miss the sky being

black with pigeons but I'm probably the only one. Even the larger dog trainers raise their own now.

You shouldn't put a band aid on cancer but sometimes a band aid is all people need for a little minor wound. If people just have a small pigeon problem shooting might work. Exclusion or electric devices are the best if the damagedollar formula works out. I haven't used many spikes because I've seen them beaten so many times. Definitely no sticky sht no matter what the brand.