[QUOTE=RutlandH2O;7863539]
This thread is very timely. Our 4 Shires are winter-housed in a massive pole barn separated into 3 sections of 45’ x 30’ each. The divides are only 4’ high, and the ceiling height is approximately 20’ at the apex. The barn is open to the outside on one long side and on half of the two short sides above a 4’ perimeter wall. We’ve always had the odd pigeon. However, this past year their numbers have snowballed. I was constantly scraping pigeon poo off horizontal surfaces and sweeping up their mess. One of my mares developed wounds on her face from persistent rubbing. I attributed it to some of her medications (Danilon, Pentosan, Prascend, wormers) to no avail. My vets took biopsies of the wounds, again inconclusive. We put her on a course of antibiotics which helped dry up several of the lesions, only for me to be greeted by 3 new ones last week.
My vet came out about 10 ago with a skin specialist. We had a major consultation regarding the pigeons. It was decided that the time had come to deal with the mounting poo, feathers, and any associated irritants the pigeons might be depositing on the ground below. I hired a marksman to come to the farm in the evening when the birds were roosting for the night. He had an air rifle with a night scope. We removed the horses and let him get to work. I was worried about the horses freaking out, but, to my surprise, the whole experience was quite stress-free and quiet. There was very little in the way of fluttering and hysteria on the part of the birds, mainly because this took place in the dark. When he was done, we found he had bagged 51 birds.
The next day I scraped every surface and ring feeder, then vacuumed the entire pole barn. I, then, disinfected every surface, whether horizontal or vertical. So far so good. There are no new wounds on my mare and almost nothing in the way of faecal matter from the remaining 3 birds. Our hay pole barn, sheep and donkey barns were cleaned of pigeons, as well.
I was quite upset about the idea of a cull, but the marksman was so accurate that only 2 birds were winged (and dispatched immediately). I don’t recommend having cats to do the job. Cats kill too many songbirds (our barn cat is locked up in our tack room from 4pm until the next mid-morning, due to his pillaging of our songbird population, despite all those pigeons).[/QUOTE]
This is really the best way to do it. Depends on the barn owner complying and finding a crack shot with night vision gear.
