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It is my understanding that pheasants will often turn to green wheat during times of extreme drought or as a supplemental water source. Throughout each hunting season we will find a pheasant or two full of green wheat.
 
There wasn't enough rain to properly emerge a lot of the wheat in the western 1/3 of kansas. The birds like eating this wheat that is barely sprouted better than the stuff thats growing because its easier to scratch out. I shot several the last weekend that was choked full of wheat with 1/4 to 1/2 inch sprouts on the kernel.
 
Green winter wheat generally contains 18 to 26% protein and that 26% is at its highest in Feb. March and April and around 11% calcium and it also contains phosphorus and magnesium (natural laying mesh) both hens and roosters will eat it, but it is especially beneficial in its reproductive benefits to the hen pheasant in the spring time.
In addition to that in April, May and June wheat provides a green cushy place to hide a nest from many predators in an ocean of green. Just need to get the hatch out before its cut.

Wheat is a big time benefit to pheasants. If you "Google Earth" and look down at E. Colorado, W. & SW. Kansas,Texas and Oklahoma panhandles (the central & southern plains) the combination of wheat and center pivot irrigation may be the "Goose that Lays the Golden Egg" for wild pheasant production. But you also need a wet spring (not flooding spring) El nina winter and spring along with summer showers, for best results.
 
Every now and then I'll find a rooster with winter wheat in his crop. I've never noticed the kernels before just the sprouts. When it snows I notice the birds on winter wheat quite a bit. It is a good cold weather food that's easy to find, geese like it when it snows too.
 
When we started hunting on a particular farmers place about 7 years ago he said to be sure and hunt a couple of waterways/creeks that went between some alfalfa and wheat fields. He said the pheasants loved eating both of them as plants. We hunted those places and pretty much always got birds. Never looked in them to see what they were eating though.
 
I found the same thing in several birds over New Years !!:cheers:
 
I have found on multiple occasions the seed and the sprouts. I always find much more corn and milo but several times the green wheat has shown up. I even found a bunch of soybeans in a few birds in NW Kansas this year.
 
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