Golf course turns to goats to keep weeds and brush at bay

What can rid a golf course of brush, weeds, thorny bushes and even poison ivy? Goats, of course.

Four neutered dairy goats are doing the trick at Braintree Municipal Golf Course, according to Daryn Brown, the course’s director of operations.

Three of the goats are Lamancha siblings named Bogey, Sandy and Bunker. The fourth is an Alpine dwarf named Ranger.

Brown bought the goats as weeks-old kids this past winter and bottle-fed them as they grew. He moved them into a shed on the golf course in the spring. Since then, he has brought them out nearly every day to graze in a movable pen to clear the wooded areas between fairways where golfers sometimes lose balls.

For the goats it’s a movable feast, and for the golf course staff it’s a time saver.

“It’s a scorched-earth policy: They leave nothing behind,” Brown said. “And they fertilize as they go.”