Dakota's CRP Disaster 2012
- Thread starter safari
- Start date
As what was presented to me you were to be limited to five year rotations on getting the grass harvested. If you have thick stands of grass which in my case I do of tall wheat/intermediate/alfalfa mix the stand gets choked. The grass is not as tall and walking thru it there is not near the activity of birds in that old stand of grass that hasn't been harvested or burned in a more timely manner. By controling it yourself you don't have to ask anyone if you want to lightly disk as well. With the price of good hay not sticks like what you get to harvest in August your hay value is much better.
Some parts of the acerage has a little different topography but what I do on land that has not been in CRP ever but what I planted to tall wheat grass/intermediate/alfalfa mix is to shoot for that 20-25 acres and cut every other year. Pretty simple once you get it set up. Large blocks not strips. Strips are easier to hunt that are twenty five yards in width but it won't hold the birds like the big blocks plus some nice people like Jim Ristau from Pheasants Forever in Chamberlain SD that have studied or I have asked have stated and I understand the concept narrow strips are easier for predators to hunt as well. On the blocks sometimes due to moisture conditions I find I should rotate a little differently due to those conditions. Which works better than living under the thumb of sometimes arbitrary rules that had good intentions but don't allow you to change when another way would be better for that year considering finances and habitat. I'm not saying my ideas are for everybody but until I'm educated differently I know I have improved things due to increase in bird numbers. I don't have a tremendous acerage to experiment with but trying to play off the neighbors farming practices has helped as well. I want to have good water, nesting and fall/winter cover. I do some foodplots but find with the neat concept of not hunting till later in the day (which I thought was ridiculous when I was first exposed to this but have really changed my mind) the birds will feed out early on to the neighbors then return to my better cover and water mid day.
With the weather changes and expenses of life things are dynamic but I wonder if I would find it boring if it was a perfect and easy. In the short time I have had the priviledge of being the steward of the land I'm involved with what appears intially sometimes the biggest failures on my projects I have either learned more from or really surprised myself on how mother nature really reached out with a helping hand. Jim Ristau from Pheasants Forever and some old cagy farmers have been so good on helping me. My ideas are really theirs that I just put into practice. I thank them all.
With the weather changes and expenses of life things are dynamic but I wonder if I would find it boring if it was a perfect and easy. In the short time I have had the priviledge of being the steward of the land I'm involved with what appears intially sometimes the biggest failures on my projects I have either learned more from or really surprised myself on how mother nature really reached out with a helping hand. Jim Ristau from Pheasants Forever and some old cagy farmers have been so good on helping me. My ideas are really theirs that I just put into practice. I thank them all.
Sorry, I got off on a tangent in my mind on when I will cut the hay as compared to how. I'm over fifity so it is okay. Last week of June first week of July. I'm really thinking on putting in some stands of yellow alfalfa as what some authors have seemed to state you can get a very good quality feed but you cut it later as well and the majority of the broods have matured to the point they can get away from the haying equipment. I would like to visit with someone that does this practice and see this in operation and see the bird population in the area. Though, I think diversity is better not just a perfect monoculture.
1pheas4
Moderator
NO DOUBT leaving the ditches alone helps bird #'s! Studies show there's up to a %25 increases in pheasant numbers/populations as a result of leaving ditches alone.
Illinois really has problems with leaving ditches uncut
. A gentleman in my area emailed me last week telling me how the county cut his ditches and the pheasants disappeared from his property. For his area, ditches are the one and only "run way" left connecting his habitat to other habitats in the area. Therefore the birds can no longer get to his property with their chicks.Leaving ditches alone is a common sense (partial) fix to a very big problem. i.e. habitat fragmentation.
Anyway, glad to hear the new one bird nests in your ditches!:cheers:
Think that ditches are the ONLY place a hen has a chance! If she could nest elsewhere she would, sparcely green aisles of road way frontages it what she has left, or be killed in a early alfalfa mowing. I would be dubious that a hen's success in these circumstances, I will even call it " a trip crop" enducing behavior which will very likely cause the species to be unviable. Road kill, mowing disturbance, nest disturbance by predators, if the hen's nest in ditches, the predators know it too!, and it's a long easy to navigate trail. Face it, it's a longshot providing a successful brood anyway, so we placate ourselves that this of all bullets in a conservationist's arsenal we have our hope on this? It may help, for a while, but is not going to erase a prolonged drain on the population.
1pheas4
Moderator
Yes and well said. We're undoubtedly in a sad state/possession when we have to look to ditches as the primary source of travel from habitat to habitat.
Though, in SD's case (for now) leaving the ditches in combination with "dirty" farming practices relates to great bird #.