Baling wildlife areas

C

captaincoot

Banned
Are areas around you guys going to be baled this year? This and burning in the fall seems silly. I'm sure they have their reasons but I think winter habatit is whats lacking around here:( Its not that great for feeding. at least grazing it gets tall before fall. and you can hunt it:thumbsup: Just wodering how wide spread this is
 
Captn, I bale 98 acres on my area. That's down from over 400 by my predecessor. These meadows are sub-irrigated and if I didn't bale them they would turn into dogwood thickets in a couple of years and become wooded in less than 20. That would provide deer and turkey cover, but they would become marginal cover for bobwhite or pheasants and limited forage as they age.

As for fall burning, if succession is running rampant and grasslands are getting too dominated by grass species, a great tool is a late summer or fall burn. It sets back the grass and gives the forb species a head start in the spring. It doesn't kill the grass, it just tips the balance more toward the forbs.

Many of our wildlife areas are centered on riparian corridors. As a result, they are very susceptible to fast rates of succession. The cost of both mechanical and chemical control methods are prohibitive. Using a prescribed burn or unconventional grazing method often provides the needed results without breaking the budget. Sometime ask the manager what his working budget is for the area you are looking at. If it's like here, it's a laughably small number. Unfortunately, if you get too many bad burn years, the brush can get too far ahead and those more expensive techniques have to be used to get caught up.
 
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PD you out did yourself again nice answers:thumbsup: That what the guy said that takes care of the grazing program around here. Budget is the biggy. And they got to deal with guys like me that just look at the hunting picture don't get what it really takes to maintain a productive ecosystem. I think I'm learning slowly though:D
 
Hay ground is some of the best nesting areas there are. Seems the hens feel safe in the short open areas.

If they are cut after nesting is over that is.
 
God bless you for being receptive to new ideas! Some folks aren't. Had the division chief call me once. Said he had a KDOT wig in his office that wanted to string me up despite his talking to him for 45 minutes. I guess the guy thought that my burning was "destroying" the quail habitat on the area. I said "put him on the phone". I talked to the gent for about 10 minutes and gave him a short ecology lesson on where quail fit into the picture habitat wise. When I hung up the gent was ready to come over and run the torch. I thought my deed was done only to have the big boss call back in just minutes to ask what I had told the gent. The boss was from Park background and knew nothing about wildlife management. I explained what I had told my constituent and gained some respect from above. I guess we biologist types need to do a better job educating our constituents about where game species fit in succession and what it takes to get or keep it there. I have little doubt that your bios have the same overload that I have and limited funds/help. It is easy for us to put our nose to the grindstone and not look up to see these folks needing an explanation. We have so much to do and want to be perfect that we can ignore other responsibilities.

I come on this site as a bird hunter. Fortunately, depending upon how you look at it, I am also a bio and willing to not hide and to talk about things. I don't know everything! I will tell you when I don't know. But I can often reach more folks that need the information with a 5 minute visit here than I can sitting in the office or working law enforcement for a week. I like to provide that service where I can. Every area is different. However, many things parallel. Iowa probably is a little harsher in the winter and gets more rainfall than me. That changes the level of cover needed and also speeds up the succession due to moisture. The species are largely the same and the techniques as well. Politics may differ as well as goals. I just recommend you stop by the headquarters some rainy day with a thermos of coffee and some doughnuts and have a talk. Might find a place for you to play a role in improving that manager's success managing for what you love come fall. My 2 cents!
 
McFarmer said:
Hay ground is some of the best nesting areas there are. Seems the hens feel safe in the short open areas.

If they are cut after nesting is over that is.
Click to expand...

My haying season here is July 1-20. Peak of the quail hatch is about June 15, so by July 1 it is 75-90% over. This timing allows the grass to get some regrowth before frost so that it can replenish it's root reserves and not lose root mass due to the haying. I also require that they leave 6 inches of grass uncut so that there is leaf mass there to initiate that recovery.
 
I have been cutting hay recently. Yesterday I cut a small field that had half of it cut earlier and half uncut until now. In 16 acres I got up two pheasant broods, strong fliers and a brood of turkeys. No bobolinks or ground nesting birds.

This tells me the uncut portion raised those broods and they later went to the previously cut area to forage, much easier to get around.

The lack of song birds, even though I saw them all spring and summer tells me they have fledged and moved out.

Rabbits galore and the hawks were busy.

I don't lose much production this way. The single cutting bales will go to dry cows who don't need the high quality while the multiple cutting stuff will go to those animals who need the higher protein feed. The whole field will again be cut once more this summer.

Cutting some more this week.

Last year this field had only one brood of mallards hatch, no pheasants.
 
Cut two more fields today, three more broods. That makes five for this cutting vs none last year. So I guess NW Iowa pheasants will be infinitely better than last year.

These new swathers are hard on the birds, they are much quieter.
 
Besides flushing bars, two methods that can decrease loss to the swather are: mow from the center out, pushing broods to cover, or mow back and forth, ending by cover, so that you're not trapping all the broods in the center.
 
Prairie Drifter said:
Besides flushing bars, two methods that can decrease loss to the swather are: mow from the center out, pushing broods to cover, or mow back and forth, ending by cover, so that you're not trapping all the broods in the center.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I'm not putting flushing bars on.

Most all the broods are in the first round or two, they hang around the edges. Soon as you see the movement, push in the clutch and let them find a way out, hopefully out and not farther in. The old self-propelled was better, made a lot more noise.

A duck story: in the first pass around a field a hen mallard got up right in front of the swather, no time to swerve or stop. I got out and looked, the mower went right over the nest, never broke an egg.

A day after that I was raking the hay together and was trying to watch for the nest, I was planning on driving around it. Lo-and-behold I spot the hen and 7-8 ducklings scramble over the windrow into the fence line. She went back to the nest, hatched them out, and got them away in less than 24 hours. A lucky duck.
 
I was going to bid on the baling but decided not to because I'm grazing their ground already. Guys would think I have the inside scoop if I won so decided against it. Don't need that headache:)
 
Prairie Drifter said:
God bless you for being receptive to new ideas! Some folks aren't. Had the division chief call me once. Said he had a KDOT wig in his office that wanted to string me up despite his talking to him for 45 minutes. I guess the guy thought that my burning was "destroying" the quail habitat on the area. I said "put him on the phone". I talked to the gent for about 10 minutes and gave him a short ecology lesson on where quail fit into the picture habitat wise. When I hung up the gent was ready to come over and run the torch. I thought my deed was done only to have the big boss call back in just minutes to ask what I had told the gent. The boss was from Park background and knew nothing about wildlife management. I explained what I had told my constituent and gained some respect from above. I guess we biologist types need to do a better job educating our constituents about where game species fit in succession and what it takes to get or keep it there. I have little doubt that your bios have the same overload that I have and limited funds/help. It is easy for us to put our nose to the grindstone and not look up to see these folks needing an explanation. We have so much to do and want to be perfect that we can ignore other responsibilities.

I come on this site as a bird hunter. Fortunately, depending upon how you look at it, I am also a bio and willing to not hide and to talk about things. I don't know everything! I will tell you when I don't know. But I can often reach more folks that need the information with a 5 minute visit here than I can sitting in the office or working law enforcement for a week. I like to provide that service where I can. Every area is different. However, many things parallel. Iowa probably is a little harsher in the winter and gets more rainfall than me. That changes the level of cover needed and also speeds up the succession due to moisture. The species are largely the same and the techniques as well. Politics may differ as well as goals. I just recommend you stop by the headquarters some rainy day with a thermos of coffee and some doughnuts and have a talk. Might find a place for you to play a role in improving that manager's success managing for what you love come fall. My 2 cents!
Click to expand...

Keep up the good work.
 
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