Local News

Texas Tech to Take Care of Their Pigeon Problem With Birth Control

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Tony Maples Photography

 

The pigeon population is an issue at the Texas Tech Universty campus in Lubbock. KXAN reports that the school spends over $100,000 a year cleaning up after the mess that the birds make. KCBD adds that students are saying that the pigeons are so noisy that it sometimes makes it difficult for them to concentrate in class.

Now, a team of researches have come up with a solution called Ovo. Ovo is basically a form of birth control targeted at pigeons that will be mixed in with their food. It would only effect the female pigeons, and it would halt the growth of the 2,000+ pigeon population after a couple of years.

PhD student Erin Bohlander explains, “It’s used to make the eggs infertile, it breaks up the layers so the egg yolk and egg white do not connect. So the bird will keep laying eggs but the eggs will not fertilize. It does not harm the birds.”

Assistant Vice President of Operations at Texas Tech Sean Childers is leading the pigeon birth control project on campus. He says that at first, it won’t save the university money, but in the long run it should cut costs, and they’ll be at the forefront of this specific kind of research.

The Texas Tech Animal Rights Coalition says that people should calm down and leave the pigeons alone and let them be a part of the campus. “It’s a pigeon, not a rooster! It’s not a noisy animal,” one student told KCBD.