CHESTERMERE, Alta. – Two former Saskatchewan farmers have found there is life after leaving the land.
Now living in Calgary, Brian Gall and Ray Gjesdal’s inventions have scooped up broad interest from as far away as Florida and as close to home as Calgary.
Working out of Gjesdal’s Chestermere shop, the two built and developed a machine to pick up goose droppings and came up with a robot to chase territorial water fowl from parks and golf courses.
Gall, who has been an inventor for most of his life, was first approached by the City of Regina to produce a custom-made dropping collector for Wascana Park.
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A trained mechanic and former farmer from Kipling, Sask., he developed a low-to-the-ground machine that works on the same principle as a combine with a pickup in front and collection unit in the back.
Golf courses and parks across North America are frustrated with Canada geese and other water fowl leaving mounds of slippery and unsightly manure on greens and walkways.
“I got a call from a guy in Florida who said, ‘does it pick up flamingo poop?’ ” Gall said.
The yellow pooper scooper is 1.3 metres wide and has interchangeable brushes on a front pickup to toss wet or dry droppings into plastic tubs in the back of the machine. It has a 5.5 horsepower motor and is pulled by a garden tractor.
The contents can be added to compost piles.
Named the Goose Poop Buster, the machine can be adjusted to strip paint and grease from cement floors, pick up loose grain in seed-cleaning plants or perhaps pick blueberries.
“It’s endless what we can do with it,” Gall said.
“This is a wonderful machine.”
Another possibility is building a large leaf collection system as an alternative to leaf blowers, which some jurisdictions have banned because of noise and dust pollution.
The two have built 20 units by hand but as sales picked up they discussed construction contracts with larger manufacturers.
Another recent invention is a robotic goose – a life-like decoy mounted on heavy duty wheels. It operates with radio controls similar to model race cars and can chase errant geese at speeds up to 52 km-h.
The Robo-goose can turn, is quiet and is cheaper to operate than dogs, which are used in some jurisdictions to frighten geese.
Gall and Gjesdal are working on a refit so the robot can go in the water for aquatic rescues. They may also outfit it with a camera to monitor poachers.
Six robots have been shipped to customers so far, including to Toronto, which also bought scoopers.
