Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Goose Control

Now if we could only figure out how to get our greens to bounce geese off of them like this, we wouldn't have a goose problem.    Geese are our biggest problem here at the Broadlands from November until March, eating holes in the greens, defecating in the fairways, and just being in the way of your golf ball.  With 11 lakes and over 100 acres of tasty turf the geese love our course, during the peek goose season we will have approximately 2,000 geese on the golf course at one time.  Every year we try new techniques to try and reduce the goose population but with no success.  The best thing we can hope for is a lot of deep snow cover and coyote activity this winter.
Our new techniques for this season include
  • rope install along a few lakes to make it more difficult for the geese to get in and out of the water
  • Spraying an organic grape seed and mint extract along lake banks
  • goose lights in the lakes on 5 and 15