You will not need to do anything until the cygnets are approximately 8-10 months of age. This is when the cygnets will take on their adult coloration and the parents will begin to chase them from the existing pond. This is of course, if the pond is a small body of water. A large pond (8 acres) can comfortably house 6 swans. Even though the parents will chase them, as long as the young swans have sufficient food and water areas as well as on-land preening areas, this may not be an issue. You must allow the cygnets to remain with the parents so that they learn how to be swans, how to bathe, preen, search for food, nest and protect themselves from predators.

The major issue is going to be when the cygnets pair and want their own pond to raise a family. Unfortunately, this breeding pair (if they are mute swans) can have 1-10 cygnets a year for the rest of their lives. If they are Black Swans, they can produce 1-5 cygnets twice a year. This is ultimately going to be a recurring problem for you as five separate dams may not be sufficient as each of these cygnets eventually age and have offspring. A swan can live up to 30 years, so this situation has the propensity of having a truck-load of cygnets on a yearly basis.

Your best bet would be to move the cygnets to a separate pond at 8 months of age and pair like genders (male with male) and (female with female) so no offspring are produced. The only way to ensure that this is going to work is if the swans cannot fly and cannot easily find the opposite sex swans within their pond area.

Your other alternative is to find a good home for all the swans, (cygnets and parents) and start over with a same gender pair so the golf course does not have this ongoing problem.

Additionally, cygnets will need to be pinioned between 1-3 weeks of age if your state/country requires that the swans must be rendered unable to fly. This means that you will need to capture the cygnets, transport the swans to a veterinarian (within a very reasonable time period- less than 2 hours separated from parents or the parents may abandon them). All of these possible on-going issues is why we recommend swans that are paired with same gender mates so no offspring are produced. Otherwise, you basically become a breeder. The Regal Swan