Dairy farmer gets help in fight with starlings

When dairy farmer Jerry Siemers fired at the starlings roosting on a ladder alongside his silo a few days ago, they were so plentiful that 35 died from a single shotgun blast. Siemers shoots starlings because their droppings damage his feeding operation. Salmonella poisoning and histoplasmosis, a lung disease, are two of the threats posed by birds to his 200-head herd and to the people at his farm.

A dairy farmer has to keep feed in front of the cows 24 hours a day. The feed attracts birds. "They hang around there all day long and defecate wherever they feel like it -- in the feed, in the hay, in the silage and on the cows," Siemers says.

The number of starlings that have been freeloading at Siemers' dairy farm has been estimated at 1,000 to 1,500. Mounds of droppings pile up an inch or two deep. Siemers has tried almost all the nonlethal means of getting rid of the birds, including pyrotechnics and scarecrows. He tried dummy owls because owls are the birds' natural predators, but within 48 hours starlings were sitting atop them.

"They're smart critters," Siemers says.

Trying to keep the starlings away from his dairy farm just west of Cape Girardeau finally led him to ask the United States Department of Agriculture to take lethal action.

Last week, the USDA put feed pellets laced with the poison DRC-1339 on the roof over Siemers' feed lot. DRC-1339 causes kidney failure in birds and, along with frigid temperatures, was responsible for the hundreds of dead birds reported in Cape Girardeau on Monday. It is not considered a danger to animals that might consume the birds. Dead birds can be deposited in the trash, but anyone who wants the USDA to pick them up can phone 573-379-2933.

Similar population control measures have been used previously in other parts of the state and elsewhere in the nation, but this is the first attempt to control the bird population with poison in this region.

Hurting milk production

Damage to property is one of the justifications the USDA has for controlling animal populations. If cows are fighting diseases, their ability to produce milk declines, Siemers says. Their interest in feeding decreases and antibiotics must be used to keep them healthy. Calves have been lost at the Siemers farm because their mothers passed salmonella or histoplasmosis onto them. The result for Siemers is lost income.

Because starlings are a non-native species, they are not protected by law. They are a European bird first introduced in New York City in 1890. Within 30 years they could be found coast-to-coast.

Dr. Bill Eddleman, a Southeast Missouri State University ornithologist and president of the Four Seasons chapter of the National Audubon Society, says the danger of baiting is that it can hurt some protected birds that flock with starlings.

But Eddleman said a feedlot probably maximizes the chances that most of the birds feeding there were starlings.

At the Siemers farm, the USDA first put out poison-free feed to monitor the birds that came in and how much they were eating. "There were so many starlings at the farm they pretty much excluded all other birds," said Robert Byrd, a wildlife specialist for the USDA in Portageville, Mo.

Since the risk to non-target birds was considered low, the USDA decided to proceed.

In the winter, starlings roost in towns where it's warmer and then fly 20 or 30 miles one way to find food. "You never know where they're going," Byrd said.

Many towns in Southeast Missouri have starling problems, Byrd says. "In the winter pretty much every town in Southeast Missouri and the central U.S. has some sort of bird problem."

The National Audubon Society itself has DRC-1339 under USDA guidance to control gulls. But the organization is concerned about the use of the chemical in North Dakota to kill red-winged blackbirds deemed a threat to sunflower crops. The opposition is on the grounds that the program would be ineffective and would affect rare or declining non-target species, Eddleman said.

"When used in a targeted situation, the organization has no problem. When used indiscriminately, there is a problem."

Fighting the starlings is a no-win battle, Siemers says. "You might poison and kill 10 of them and 100 take their place."

He can't see any difference in the numbers of birds at his farm since the feed was baited with poison. "It's going to take a prolonged time before we can make a dent,' he said, adding that getting other farmers to participate in the program would help.

Byrd said the USDA now is monitoring the effect on Siemers' farm.

sblackwell@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 182