[Integrated Pest Management] Built for the Birds

If you’ve ever asked this question or felt frustrated by attempts to control birds in and around your processing plant, know that you are not alone.

"The biggest problem with food plants is that they are structurally built to attract birds," says Pete Markham, president of A-Mark Bird Management with offices in Rockville, Ind., and Baytown, Texas. A bird’s survival needs are the same as those for humans: food, water and shelter. Food is often available at the points of entry of incoming goods, under conveyor belts where spillage is common, and along tracks near the facility. Water is just about always available, from sources such as cleaning residue to dripping pipes or, simply, external puddling. Shelter is found in overhangs, or even within the building itself, with heat generated by the very act of food processing. In addition, buildings have structural outcroppings or ledges perfect for bird roosting and are often located in outlying areas where the structure provides the best – or only – roosting area for the birds.

Markham understands the difficulties faced by quality assurance managers. "I’ve worked in that type environment. I know there are always a lot of jobs that need to be done yesterday," he says, but to protect the plant, people and product, the manager does need to have a basic understanding of bird behavior, hazards and options for control in and around the facility.

Pest birds, the most common of which are house sparrows, pigeons and European starlings, are those which cause damage, transmit disease and contaminate our food, and are a general nuisance, primarily because they prefer to live, feed and breed in areas of human occupation.

Keeping birds from making a home on the exterior of your building goes a long way toward keeping them from entering the building itself. "Birds don’t usually come inside a building until they are comfortable with the outside features," says Cameron Riddell, president of Bird Barrier in Carson, Calif. But once they are comfortable outside, they will begin to venture in.

"A plant is built for birds to stay inside," affirms Bruce Donoho, owner of Bird-B-Gone in Mission Viejo, Calif., so the first thing that should be done is to change the environment and physically alter the areas in which they are feeding and roosting: remove food sources, cut access to shelter areas and eliminate water availability.

Donoho also recommends that plants consult with experts for advice on both bird proofing and control. Suppliers can provide contact information for consultants and authorized installers to inspect the plant and provide recommendations and estimates.

EMPLOYEE EDUCATION. With 90 percent of the problem being sanitation, and the structural situation making up the rest, Markham says the best defense against bird problems is employee training. "Teach employees how to shut windows, shut doors and clean up after there is a spillage," he says. Educate them that, regardless of their job title or line of duty, sanitation is a part of their job. Markham has seen situations where food is dropping through holes in a conveyor belt, but "no one takes the initiative to make a phone call, plug the hole or report it to maintenance," he says. Training to "shut windows, shut doors" may sound simplistic, but open doors and windows are primary sources of entry for birds, agree Markham and Pat Hottel, technical director for McCloud Services, in Hoffman Estates, Ill. Even with such precautions, birds can outwit human attempts. Markham has actually seen pigeons land on the ground, wait for a forklift come to a dock door, then walk right through with the forklift.

Employees also can cause challenges in bird control by misguided attempts to protect the birds. "We have situations where we have live traps and employees release the birds," Hottel says. In other cases it will be employees feeding the birds that is attracting them to the site in the first place. To dissuade employees from such activity and to protect the plant, product and people, she says, it is very important to educate all employees on the hazards of birds living or roosting in proximity with your plant.

"Often," Donoho says, "to change the behavior of birds, you have to change the behavior of people."

Once a bird is inside your plant, its potential for contamination increases significantly and control and elimination become much more difficult. A pair of pigeons can leave 70 to 80 droppings during a 24-hour period, Markham says, which poses potential for direct product contamination as well as introducing lice, parasites and disease into the environment.

"Birds can get in (structures) in ways that other pests can’t," says Riddell. "And if they find shelter, food and water in a building, they are going to become quite comfortable there."

BEHAVIOR PATTERNS. The first step in control is to learn the behavior pattern of the birds, the experts agreed. Birds are very habitual, so the key to control is to identify their patterns, then disrupt these behaviors. "The challenge," says Chris Cook, general manager of Fly-Bye in Kirkland, Wash., "is that the birds have learned to come in and get a free meal." It’s like offering free meals to a homeless person — they’d be back every day, Cook says.

Thus, he explains, "the bottom line with what we’re trying to do is to change the birds’ behavior." This may be by making their roosting and feeding sites unattractive or unattainable or by literally trapping the birds in-flight. Essentially, you need to teach the birds to go someplace else; but, he adds, if there is no place else for them to go, it will become very difficult. However, Cook adds, "I never tell a customer that they won’t have any more bird issues." He does guarantee that the birds will stay away from the area which he has been protected, but the birds may end up moving just around the corner to an unprotected area.

One of the reasons that pest birds are such a problem is because they congregate in flocks – causing more harm and damage than would a single bird. On the positive side, you can discourage or displace an entire flock by affecting a small number of birds. For example, Bill Phillips, Director of Sales for Curtis Dyna-Fog in Westfield, Ind., explains that fogging an area with an irritant can cause the affected birds to put out a distress signal, resulting in dispersal of the flock and, with sufficient repetition, causing them to equate the area with the repellent and forcing them to relocate away from your site.

Mona Zemsky, Marketing Manager for Bird-X, says she goes even further to explain that not only do you need to change the birds’ behavior, you need to get to the root of the problem. "Every so often," Zemsky says, "I get a customer who calls and jokes, ‘Oh, I can just shoot them!’" While this is certainly possible in some areas, though not at all advocated by Bird-X, she says, "The thing that they are not thinking about is that is treating the symptom not the problem." An effective solution treats the problem by making the area undesirable for the birds. It’s like treating a disease, she says, if you simply attack the symptoms, you will never have a cure.

In addition, she says, you can actually make the problem worse by treating the symptoms. "Nature hates a vacuum," she says. If you get rid of the birds, but don’t place barriers or deterrents or remove the food and water, you will simply attract a new flock, perhaps in even greater numbers.

CONTROL. Around the exterior of plant, Cook says, "You need to understand that total exclusion is not realistic – just control." Thus, the goal should be to remove the birds from inside the building and control them on the exterior. A program which, experts agree, takes an integrated approach. "From a success standpoint, using multiple strategies seems to work better," Hottel says.

Unfortunately, Riddell affirms, there’s not any one technique that will work in all situations, but the goals of a bird program should be:

• externally – to keep birds away from the building and to close off access points, including doors, windows and structural flaws.

• internally – first, to get inhabiting birds out, and second, to keep new birds from coming in.

Once the pest birds’ habits and behavior in and around your plant are understood, and roosting, feeding and flight areas are identified, control methods can be put in place. Experts always should be consulted before targeting any pest birds to ensure the bird is considered to be a nuisance bird and the method is authorized for the planned area and application. Options include:

• Trapping – baited wire caging or nets can be used to trap birds. Most often used within a building, birds will then be released outside or in another area. The trap-and-release method will not keep birds from returning to your site, however. Sometimes the birds will beat you back to the plant – no matter how far away they are released.

• Structural repellents – spikes, rods, coils, wires and netting can be placed on or around roosting sites to prevent birds from landing on a ledge, rooftop or other area. It is important to understand that the birds will simply move to another location, on your structure or a nearby building, but the repellents will serve to move birds from sensitive areas.

• Chemical repellents – fogging with chemical irritants can change a bird’s behavior by causing it to equate the area with the irritant. Most often used indoors, the method also can be used around statues and other areas where placements would affect aesthetics. Regular application would be necessary in such situations.

• Baits – irritant-containing baits attract birds for feeding then cause a distress reaction in the bird which serves to alarm the flock and move it from the area. Care must be taken with baits to ensure that non-target species are not affected, and local regulations must always be consulted, as baits are no longer legal in some areas.

• Direct kill – some areas, or plants themselves, do not allow killing of pest birds, and others will discourage it for public relations reasons. However, it can be a viable option and sometimes the only realistic alternative for eliminating a bird that has taken residence in your plant. These methods may include shooting, lethal baits and trapping for elimination.

Zemsky notes that it is an integrated approach that will provide the best solution. "You need to make the area undesirable in many ways." She likens it to a party: "If you put away the beer and turn off the lights, people will leave much sooner," she says. For birds, it can be a number of combinations such as sound and a physical barrier or taste and visual aversions; having a variety of products on the market enables plant managers to choose the combination that best fits their needs and restrictions.

She also said that bird experts or consultants can be helpful in setting up a bird control program, but a plant’s maintenance group can also do it themselves if they have a full understanding of birds, control options, and bird behavior – such as the fact that just treating one area does not get you "off the hook." Zemsky describes the customer who said a spiked roost-inhibiting product didn’t work because, he said, "I put the Needle Strips on one window ledge, and the birds simply went to the other ledge." That means it did work, Zemsky assured him, explaining that the birds have to move somewhere, but once set in a behavior, they will find another nearby desirable location if at all possible. "Birds are quite stubborn," she says, "but we can use their stubbornness against them. If the place is no longer conducive to them – for food, water, shelter, vantage point, they will want to go elsewhere – off of your property."

While an integrated approach provides optimum results, both Markham and Hottel cite netting as a preferred method of control. "Netting is more long-term, so it would be one of my first choices," Hottel says. In addition to protective netting to interrupt access to roosting sites, Markham will often use mist netting to trap birds in-flight and remove them from the building. Though labor intensive, because it requires a hands-on approach, determining the flight pattern, netting the bird and being on hand to release it immediately, it is a very effective method of removing birds from within a plant.

COST. "Bird control in a processing plant is an expensive proposition," Donoho says. "Sticking up a fake owl just isn’t going to work."

Birds are costly pests – in both control and leaving them be. It can be challenging to create a control program that is effective as well as within the cost range of a plant with tight budget constraints, Hottel says, because bird control is labor intensive, there are no inexpensive options, but if the plant ends up with adulterated product because of birds roosting above a line or otherwise contaminating the product, that plant may have to destroy the entire run.

The problem, says Markham, is that "you really don’t have an option." The hazards of not controlling or eliminating the birds have an even higher potential cost and risk for a plant. With the potential of an Avian flu pandemic, bird control has taken on an even greater importance.

In addition to cost, some plants face public relations challenges which limit their use of certain controls. The pest management company may determine that baits are the most effective solution for a situation, but a plant may decline this option because of past history of bird kills, Hottel says. In setting up a bird control program, she explains, "we have to strike a balance between PR, cost and efficacy."

QUICK TIPS. Following are a few more tips on bird control and plant participation.

• Ponds – The Canada goose is also considered a pest bird and is most often a nuisance around ponds and other bodies of water. Plants that choose to build ponds on their grounds for aesthetics are most likely to have problems with geese. Markham’s recommendation: "Don’t build ponds to attract them."

• Pipe holes – Markham sees it as a common trend: when a hole needs to be bored for a 1-inch pipe, a 6-inch hole is drilled and the extra space is not plugged – resulting in birds (and other pests) squeezing right through the hole and taking up residence within the plant. "You need to build the birds out, so they can’t get in," Markham advises.

• Pallets – Pallets stored outside a dock door are a virtual invitation for birds. The birds will roost and search for food on the pallets, move from there to dock doors, then on into the warehouse. The preferred control is to move pallets indoors, but if this is not possible, the area should be netted.

• A successful control program requires plant collaboration in and around the building. These include structural:

 Design – If you are building a new facility or remodeling an existing structure, you can build birds out from the start. Diminish roosting spots by designing the plant with few or no ledges; design the equipment to minimize spillage; install self-closing doors wherever possible.

 Modifications – Some plants refuse to make modifications to their buildings because they like the way it looks. Sometimes, though, you will have to make concessions in order to deter birds from the building.

 Maintenance – Building the birds out means maintaining the structure to reduce the areas through which birds can enter. Repair flaws, plug holes, replace non-closing doors or windows, and inspect the building regularly for potential access points.

 Sanitation – Probably the greatest area in which plant managers and employees can affect a bird control program, workers should maintain sanitary surroundings at all times in all areas – picking up after themselves both indoors and out, mopping up standing water – even that remaining from cleaning efforts, and promptly cleaning up any spillage, etc.

• Birds need to drink several times a day – but it doesn’t take much to hydrate them. Automatic floor cleaners can leave water sitting in floor cracks – providing sustenance for birds inhabiting the building.

• Research – One customer, Markham says, insisted that he place plastic owls around the building even though Markham was able to show him photos of pest birds literally sitting on top of the owls. The lesson: Understand birds and research the realities of a product. "Don’t take anyone’s word for anything."

• A new goose alarm – Within the last few years, there has been a breakthrough in goose control. Previous sound repellents were based on goose distress calls developed in lab situations, Zemsky says, then explains that the new GooseBusters repeller uses actual alert and alarm calls of Canada geese recorded under natural conditions, based on research by Dr. Philip Whitford, Professor of Biology at Capital University in Ohio. The units broadcast the calls in random combinations differing in frequency, duration and intervals, changing the sound combinations, sequences and speaker selection randomly. The geese perceive the alarm calls as coming from many birds in many locations and react by evacuating the area. Once a flock is scared away repeatedly, it rarely returns.

CONCLUSION. Birds are a natural, and often pleasant, part of our natural eco-system. But when pest birds decide to take up residence in areas in which human food is being processed or stored, they become a source of potential damage, disease and contamination. Controlling these pest birds is not easy or inexpensive, but it is a necessary part of maintaining the quality of our food supply. QA

The author is a contributing editor to Quality Assurance & Food Safety magazine.