The winter time is when the goose population is the highest. We have nearly two hundred this year that try to make The Rim their home. During the afternoon they will make their way to our course for the nice lakes and beautiful grass. With the average goose making about 1.5 pounds of mess a day. That adds up to a lot of clean up.
Our control measures are far and few between. We have our course Border Collie "Chloe". She does a great job chasing them off the course during the day. She keeps the geese from getting a chance to spend too much time on a single hole. We have also tried numerous tactics from spraying the grass around the lake to make it less palatable to setting up fake coyotes to work as a scarecrow to help keep them from feeding in that area.
When I was working at Sun City we had great success with the coyotes, but I also think that the geese also had a lot more options once they left our course. The geese in this area have limited options that are close for them. Green Valley Park and the school fields seem to be a good alternative, but with pedestrian traffic at both places makes them prefer the golf course. Their other option is our storage lakes. The problem with those lakes is the limited food supply. They may not be bothered in the lakes but still prefer the grass on the golf course. I also see them head toward Star Valley but again I don't think there are to many lakes around with green grass bordering them.
We are trying every possible solution other than getting a depridation permit to lethally control the geese. Harrasment is our only option with Chloe and our carts. Just driving up to the hole is enough to scare them into flight. I was looking into other products that will make the grass less deisirable to taste. Grape Kool-aid or the sour ingredient in grape Kool-aid is supposed to work. I did the math to figure out how feesable it would be to apply it on the golf course and so far it would be a ridiculous amount of grape Kool-aid packets. There are products that contain the same active ingredient but are very spendy and require frequent reapplications.
When you're out there enjoying your round of golf and see the reminants of geese we are doing are best to get them off our property, keep them off our property and clean up after them. The recent snow storm left us with restricted access to the golf course and gave the geese more time to feed. This has given us a little extra clean up for the Holidays.
If you have any questions feel free to contact me.
Justin C. Ruiz, CGCS
justinr@therimgolfclub.org
When I was working at Sun City we had great success with the coyotes, but I also think that the geese also had a lot more options once they left our course. The geese in this area have limited options that are close for them. Green Valley Park and the school fields seem to be a good alternative, but with pedestrian traffic at both places makes them prefer the golf course. Their other option is our storage lakes. The problem with those lakes is the limited food supply. They may not be bothered in the lakes but still prefer the grass on the golf course. I also see them head toward Star Valley but again I don't think there are to many lakes around with green grass bordering them.
We are trying every possible solution other than getting a depridation permit to lethally control the geese. Harrasment is our only option with Chloe and our carts. Just driving up to the hole is enough to scare them into flight. I was looking into other products that will make the grass less deisirable to taste. Grape Kool-aid or the sour ingredient in grape Kool-aid is supposed to work. I did the math to figure out how feesable it would be to apply it on the golf course and so far it would be a ridiculous amount of grape Kool-aid packets. There are products that contain the same active ingredient but are very spendy and require frequent reapplications.
When you're out there enjoying your round of golf and see the reminants of geese we are doing are best to get them off our property, keep them off our property and clean up after them. The recent snow storm left us with restricted access to the golf course and gave the geese more time to feed. This has given us a little extra clean up for the Holidays.
If you have any questions feel free to contact me.
Justin C. Ruiz, CGCS
justinr@therimgolfclub.org 
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