Starlings and Dairy

Brad Felger owns a business in Northwest Washington and says he wants to expand. He offers a service that he believes will be very valuable to those of us in Idaho in the dairy business. So, that's a lot of people. "I would love to expand into Idaho, I have had some calls over the years from farmers there that were inquiry. I understand you have some really large flocks of starlings there. Probably a lot of dairies or something they are associated with that plague some of the farmers and I would love to come out and visit. Maybe we could set something up where some of the farmers who are interested come out and watch a bird ball up a bunch of starlings to kind of see how it works. On the dairy side, the starlings sit around and bug dairy farms? Here's what starlings do. I have spent a lot of time with local dairy farms and have been to some of their seminars and the bird damage that they receive is a little different. They get on hygienic mess from large flocks of birds and bird droppings in the food. That is not good for the cattle. But the other thing is that starlings need a high protein diet to exist. So they come into the dairy because cattle feed has a certain amount of protein in it. The cattle need the protein also to develop the size and bulk that they want so they can sell them for top dollar.