GANSO THE GOOSE DOG

MEET GANSO

I am sure all of you that have played Deer Creek this winter have noticed the geese that have been vandalizing the golf course.  The geese are particularly bad this time of year due to the fact that they are migrating.  Deer Creek is a temporary home for these birds as they travel.  We do have a small number of geese that make Deer Creek their permanent home.  The geese leave droppings on the ground everywhere they go and they do damage to the greens as they are pecking for food.  

We have explored many means of gees control and we have determined the most cost effective way to control this problem is to have a resident dog that scares the geese away.  Border Collies are the proven breed that has the best track record with geese control.  They are herders by nature and are fast enough to keep the geese on the run. 

We found Ganso at a local rescue league.  Him and his brothers and sisters were very happy to see me.  Ganso was the one that looked like the best fit for us.  Ganso has already been to basic obedience school and is quickly learning to heel, sit, stay, come, and lye down.  We are kennel training him and have currently made him an awesome home in the shop where he will have an indoor kennel with a doggie door access to a kennel run outside.  He will spend most of his time riding with us on carts and policing the golf course for those pesky birds.

We are excited to welcome Ganso to the Deer Creek Maintenance Staff.  Say hi to him when you play your next round as he is always excited to meet new friends.

FYI:  The name Ganso means goose in Spanish   We decided that was a perfect name for the the little goose chaser.    

IRRIGATION AUDIT

Water is a precious resource and we do many things behind the scenes to ensure we apply water to the Golf course in an efficient manner. Primarily making sure we apply just enough water to provide our turf plants is the objective while not over watering maintaining firm playing conditions.

Recently we started a project where we are collecting data that we will process and ultimately determine the efficiency of our turf sprinklers and we will use this data to decide if updating our sprinklers is a cost effective way to decrease ou overall water use while offering an even more consistent playing surface that looks terrific.

The technical description of this process is an Irritation Audit. We will be testing strategic areas and will hopefully come up with some valuable data once the project is completed.