Pigeons are common pests that cause problems at large power facilities. Like power stations across America, Nevada facilities have seen a pigeon population explosion. These buildings make ideal nesting spaces as pigeons can live there long-term without fearing that their nests will be affected.
Pigeons can wreak havoc in a power plant. Their poop can cause slip and fall accidents. Additionally, it contains chemical compounds that might damage equipment and wiring, leading to power outages. Power station owners and managers use active measures to control the pigeon population at their facilities. Here are some of their strategies:
Controlling Pigeon Breeding
Pigeons in urban areas and large buildings, such as power facilities, factories, and hospitals, breed relentlessly. They reproduce far more than those living in rural areas where predators abound. Indeed, these pigeons breed all year round instead of during a set breeding period. Companies specializing in pigeon control in NV have found that using pigeon contraceptives effectively reduces a pigeon population.
Pigeon birth control comes in bait that these birds consume. Once pigeons ingest enough of it, their reproductive cycle is disrupted. The birds will still mate, but any eggs females lay will not hatch. This measure has a drastic impact on pigeon population numbers and can decrease them by about 50% in the first year of use alone.
Once a pigeon birth control program commences, it must continue every day to be effective. Skipping a few days of bait could lead to a breeding frenzy, leaving the building owner to start all over again.
Nest Destruction
Pigeons with nests inside power facilities are particularly hazardous. They can cause slip and fall accidents or power outages, as mentioned before. Additionally, pigeons could startle workers as they fly in or out of their nests, causing someone to place their hand on the wrong equipment and electrocute themselves, fall, or cause some other workplace accident.
Nest destruction is an option for keeping a pigeon population under control. However, it must be done continuously as pigeons can rebuild a nest within a matter of hours. Their nests are dangerous as they contain mites and other bacteria from the pigeon dander. Therefore, anyone tasked with destroying pigeon nests should wear complete protective equipment to avoid inhaling or touching their contents.
Pigeons are hard-headed and stubborn but eventually take a hint. When their nests are regularly destroyed, they will look elsewhere to find a home base and continue breeding. However, this option only makes the pigeons someone else’s problem when they locate a new place to set up shop.
Pigeon Exclusion
Many Nevada powerplant managers have found ways of preventing pigeons from making their homes in these buildings. They start with pigeon netting and spikes to make it difficult to land and find somewhere to nest. While anyone can install these products, it is advisable to have a professional manage the task at a large industrial building to prevent unnecessary workplace accidents.
Another measure managers take is ensuring that they create a hostile living environment for pigeons. These birds will nest and breed prolifically when they find a spacious place to live and an ample supply of food and water.
Therefore, ensuring that pigeons cannot find a ready source of food and water makes them look elsewhere for a base of operations. Urban pigeons love garbage and treat it as their primary food supply. Therefore, keeping garbage cans and dumpsters closed and not allowing them to overflow cuts off the pigeons’ access to food. Ensuring that no stagnant pools of water lie around after showers do the same for their water supply.
Putting Pigeons Off
Deterrents will prevent pigeons from considering a power facility their home and breeding ground. These products come in many forms, and experts advise using them in combinations for optimal effect.
Visual deterrents scare pigeons away. Light-reflecting discs are helpful as the birds find them unsettling and perceive them as dangerous. Life-size, animated models of pigeon predators also act as an ideal deterrent. However, static models are not quite as helpful, as pigeons soon detect that they are not real and proceed to ignore them.
Sonic sound-emitting devices release high-frequency noises that pigeons cannot stand. They will move away from an area where these sounds are present. These products are plugged in near where the pigeons live for maximum effect.
Trapping
Trapping pigeons is not a complicated task. The problem is what to do with them afterward. The most humane thing to do is release them back into the wild a long-distance away. However, this does not work with pigeons. Their extraordinary homing instincts will have them back in no time.
The only way to make trapping pigeons work is to destroy the birds once they have been caught. However, this is not always legal, and most people would argue that it certainly is not an ethical practice.
