|
|
| |  | |
Deere’s winning team at Ayr
With 20 years’ experience in racing, Ayr Racecourse’s head groundsman Andy Jackson remembers a time when the mowing season was a lot shorter than it is now.
“I wish I’d kept proper weather records going back to when I started,” he says. “The grass doesn’t really stop growing any more, apart from slowing down a bit in the winter. Last year we were mowing up to the end of November, whereas we used to finish in August.”
There are also more race days and more commercial events for the six full-time and one part-time staff to cope with. Compared with only six days racing 100 years ago, the calendar now features 28 days, headed by the Scottish Grand National, plus a number of other events including the local agricultural show, concerts and the annual Saints & Sinners charity fundraiser.
“The course is always trying to make more use of the whole facility all year round to generate extra income, so there’s a lot going on all the time,” Andy Jackson adds. “In the summer at the height of the racing season, the ground staff work flat out every day, with shifts covering 6am to 8pm. With more racing and more events, we therefore have to spend more on seed, fertiliser and drainage as well.”
The ground staff’s work is made easier with a fleet of John Deere equipment bought from local dealer Nairn Brown (Glasgow) Ltd at Busby. Machines include a new 1600T Series II wide area rotary mower, which is the only mower used to cut the racetrack, and an X740 lawn tractor with collector, which is used on the paddocks, the racecourse’s hotel lawns and other amenity grass areas around the course.
Ayr’s two 5720 utility tractors are used with a Vertidrainer, slitters and rollers, and with a Votex mower on the centre of the course, which is used for the local agricultural show. Gator utility vehicles include a TE electric model mainly used by the garden staff, an HPX 4x4 Gator shared with the on-site caterers – “This can be moving a barrel of beer one day and loaded with divot mix the next,” says Andy – and a 6x4 diesel Gator that is used for general fetching and carrying.
With hardly a break all year round for the racecourse, the dealership is kept just as busy, as Nairn Brown’s area salesman Graham Stewart explains: “Years ago, when customers’ machines came into the workshop we often kept them through the winter, but not any more. Nowadays we have to service them and send them straight back out again.”
For further details and/or photographs, please contact:
| Steve Mitchell | Henry Bredin |
| ASM Public Relations | John Deere Limited |
| Tel: 024 7630 8912 | Tel: 01949 860491 |
| Fax: 024 7630 5810 | Fax: 01949 860490 |
| E-mail: steve@asmpr.co.uk | | |
|
|
|
|
