Pigs to keep seagulls away
September 14th, 2005 by Administrator
Duck club uses pigs to keep seagulls away
SALT LAKE CITY — With an oink oink here and an oink oink there, four weaner pigs seemed to have scared seagulls away from a duck hunting club.
The Rudy Duck Club, which borders the Salt Lake International Airport in the marshland of the Great Salt Lake, has been using the young pigs for the past five years. Members put the pigs up in shelters on the four islands — two per island so they have company — in the 1,900-acre club, and the animals do what comes naturally.
“The seagulls were taking over the islands,” said Lane Jensen, a member of the duck club board. Their nesting habits were “messing up the airport, it was killing off the island for any other nesting.”
Hunters who couldn’t shoot the gulls had to come up with a backup plan.
“It’s the state bird,” Jensen said.
After other methods failed to be anything more than a temporary fix, a rancher near the club suggested the pigs would root in the gull nests for eggs and disrupt the breeding cycle. The pigs were turned loose every April and roamed the islands until mid-June.
The pigs stay away from geese, which are twice as big as the weaners and have a frightening hiss.
This year, gulls didn’t try to nest on the islands, Jensen said.
“So it worked,” he said.
Associated Press — Sept. 9, 2005