G'day Sue

Get a couple of geese!! Some years ago I used to breed both ducks and
geese and bought a house on acres that had reeds, salvinia and parrot's
feather in the dam. In a very short space of time the geese bit off all
the reeds and they never regenerated, mind you the dam looked a mess
with all the floating reed pieces but in time they disappeared. They
used to get the salvinia and parrot's feather in their beaks and didn't
like to eat it but would shake their heads and fling it onto the bank
where it died from being in the sun with no water.

Geese will also 'seal' the dam if it leaks....true!! Their droppings
are mostly chewed up grass and when they are swimming on the dam their
droppings since to the bottom, this forms a mat of chewed up grass and
prevents the dam from leaking.

Besides the above.......geese are lovely people, provided they have been
well treated. They should be sitting (or about to sit) on eggs now so
you should be able to get some goslings around end of Aug or Sept. Get
at least two, one will be too lonely......better still would be a trio,
if the person you are buying from can safely sex them. (Safely, in this
case means without doing any permanent injury to the gosling.)

Hope this helps?
Bronwyn ;-)

Sue Couttie wrote:
Hello.

I have a small dam I'm aiming to transform from cow watering hole to
flourishing home for native flora and fauna.

In my enthusiasm I bought and planted into my dam a couple of plants
from a local nursery:


* Sagittaria graminea - spreading very quickly, and almost
impossible to dig up from the clay. I have since discovered this
to be one of Australia's worst aquatic weeds.
* Myriophyllum aquaticum - Parrot's Feather - also spreading very
quickly

Also, Paspalum is marching and swamping the banks of the dam and now
alarmingly into the bed of the dam itself and Bullrushes have also
appeared this year. Both are also extremely hard to erradicate by hand.

I had also added Nardoo which seems to have settled in successfully as well.

The dam teems with frogs, dragonflies and assorted insect life and is
also visited by assorted birdlife.

My concern is that the dam will be choked with these very soon and I
want to erradicate them as soon as possible without having an impact on
the wildlife.

Can anyone advise me of some environmentally friendly ways of tackling
what has become a minor ecological disaster in my own backyard?

Thanks.

Sue