The elegant mute swans that swim in the ponds on the club’s golf course have proved to be effective in aggressively chasing away geese and the nuisances they create, while also providing a unique and pleasant sight. The swans also help with course maintenance, eating pounds of moss each day. But they have fallen prey to dogs and stray golf shots, and unless breeding is successful, replacing them is costly and difficult.
Lynn Garner of Preston, Idaho has raised the elegant mute swan for about seven years, the CacheValleyDaily.com website of Logan, Utah reported. The long-neck birds live in the ponds at Preston (Idaho) Golf and Country Club. Garner has also had expensive black-necked swans and black swans on the club’s property, but dogs and kids hitting them with golf balls has reduced the bevy that is now there to two breeding pairs and an extra female.
Garner bought the swans while serving on the Preston G&CC Board of Directors, CacheValleyDaily.com reported. He was worried about the mess geese had made around area ponds, and thought the swans would be a good addition to the golf course.
The swans are really aggressive towards geese; they will chase them out of a pond, but they co-exist fine with ducks. Another positive about swans is they eat about eight pounds of moss a day, Garner told CacheValleyDaily.com.
“Swans spend about 85 percent of their time in the water and 15 percent on the ground,” Garner said. “Geese, on the other hand, spend 80 percent of their time on the ground and 20 percent in the water, and they leave quite a mess.”
Garner and others at the club have also liked the way the swans look as they glide across the water. But introducing them to the golf course ponds has not been without problems, CacheValleyDaily.com reported.
“We lost a bunch of swans and now we have to almost start over from ground zero,” Garner said. “We had two this spring, and hopefully in a year we will have some baby swans.”
Originally, Garner bought the swans as an investment, CacheValleyDaily.com reported. He was hoping he could rent them out to other pond owners, but when most of them were killed off he had to rethink his investment.
“I’ve gone backwards on them, but I sure enjoy swans. I get entertainment from watching them, but they don’t make you money,” he said.
The swans with their S curved neck are not native to the United States, but have been transplanted and can be found in many lakes and ponds across the country.
“I usually check on them every day,” Garner said about the swans’ life at Preston G&CC. “They are pretty self-sufficient until winter comes.”
During the winter, CacheValleyDaily.com reported, Garner feeds them and sometime brings them home where he can care for them.
Sources for the swans are hard to find, Garner told CacheValleyDaily.com. “I usually buy them when they are six months old from a place back east,”he said. “There are [also] some growers in the [Salt Lake City] area that are good to work with. We have a good relationship; we try to help each other when we can.”
There is a market for the swans if you can get them raised, CacheValleyDaily.com reported. A breeding pair of mute swans goes for about $1,500 to $2,000, black-neck swans are about $3,500, and all-black swans are even more expensive.