What is New Orleans Goose Egg Addling?

When most people think of ‘pest control,’ they think insects, bats, or rodents. Rarely, if ever, do they think Louisiana ‘geese.’ Louisiana geese, however, are a highly successful and prolific species – which is to say they’re pretty good at surviving just about anywhere, raising families, and taking over resources. Any animal species with that kind of combination is a potential threat to any ecosystem it encounters.



Where other species are concerned, the typical solution is to expand a hunting season, or encourage natural predators. Neither option works well for Louisiana geese, of course – not a lot of people go goose hunting, and not a lot of predators spend their time exclusively on geese. Taking goose eggs doesn’t work, either – the mother goose, seeing her missing children, simply lays more. The best solution is a little more complicated, although it does involve taking the New Orleans goose eggs. It also involves putting them back.

Goose egg addling is, simply put, the careful removal of fertilized New Orleans goose eggs from a nest, the destruction of the embryo, and the returning of those eggs to the nest. The process is simple enough to describe, but incredibly difficult to pull off. Mother geese are hard to fool.

First, you have to actually remove the eggs from the nest without alerting momma Louisiana goose. A mother is gone enough from her nest to make this possible, but it has to be timed just right – after all, you have to have the eggs back in the nest before she returns.

Second, you have to kill the embryo inside the egg without causing any damage to the outer shell. The easiest (and usually the most legal) way of doing this is to coat the entire shell surface with corn oil. The oil plugs up the egg’s pores, cutting off the oxygen to the embryo and killing it. There are certain products that do this as well, but most of the time, you’d need a permit to use them, since a great many of them contain pesticides.

Third, you have to return the egg to the nest without the mother noticing it was ever gone. If she does, she may just abandon the nest altogether and start a new round of children. That is exactly what you don’t want. The moment the mother notices something is amiss is the moment all your efforts go to waste.

If you can do this quickly, New Orleans goose egg addling is a good way to control an otherwise damaging goose population. Your other options aren’t as effective – scarecrows, flares, and shooting every goose you see might deter and destroy some, but so long as a gander can mate, make a nest, and lay eggs, the geese will win. Conning them into believing they’re hatching a full nest is always one of your best options.

Visit our New Orleans wildlife control home page to learn more about us.