Does having livestock grazing on your course produce a better playing surface ?

[Mark Pearce]

When we were building our course in St. Emilion, there was a farmer close by that had a herd of goats, and he would rent them out to the neighbors and have them graze sections of the land for them, which he controlled by putting up a temporary fence.  So, we had him try it on pieces of the course that we were just about to start working on.

What was the outcome of that trial?

[David Kelly]

I've played on many courses that have freely grazing animals and I found them for the most part charming.  However, I don't have to play them every day and deal with the droppings, ankle breaking ruts, roped off greens and weird sightings like a clearly dying horse at Yelverton, the many sheep walking around with broken or deformed legs at Southerndown, hitting an oblivious sheep with a drive  at Westward Ho!, having to tee off from the rough because a cow or sheep had had a diarrhea attack on a tee box at Brora, etc.


I do remember playing Golfclub De Hoge Kleij in The Netherlands and seeing a shepherd and a border collie escort a group of sheep onto the course to graze on a particular part of the rough on one hole that had been roped off. [size=1.375rem][/size]

[Chris Hughes]

Chris


Presumably your point is that the article highlighting the issue of compaction was mainly referring to inland clay courses while Brora is a links ? That is true but I think it also true to say that you can get compaction on links as well but maybe not the issue of "poaching" which is a new term to me.


However the discussion has moved on beyond Brora and is about grazed courses in general and if you look at the list of courses on the other thread which are grazed you will see the majority are inland course with different types of soils.


Niall

The article you linked is not relevant.