food plots on prevent plant acres

mnmthunting said:
UGuide, What your talking about is a BIG field of standing corn.
Millet?? NO WAY!!
If you come up with another standing crop come April, with seed. PLEASE let us know.:)
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Grain sorghum won't stay standing like corn?! I plated a little this year so I'll get to analyze it in person in about 10 months, but I thought it would.

What about other sorghums? I've got some egyptian wheat that I am hedging a bet on to do well through winter. I full expect it to fold over in half, but since it looks like it's on the way to 8' tall, 4' should be just fine. :cool:
 
Trouble is in the North Country, the heavy and wet snows. Takes a good strong stem to hold up. Open Winters or just light fluffy type snow I bet a good crop of millet would feed a lot of birds until Spring.
 
Egyptian wheat is notorious for lodging. Much of it will break over above knee height and make an almost unwalkable labarynth of leaning stalks. The neat thing is (here) that when it snows, there are tunnels and openings in the cover beneath the snow and the seed heads are hanging right there where the birds are. That may not be the case up north where you get snow that stays on for months and gets hard. That's why mixing numerous varieties is beneficial. Getting some to lodge and some to stand makes a dinner table for all weathers.
 
mnmthunting said:
UGuide, What your talking about is a BIG field of standing corn.
Millet?? NO WAY!!
If you come up with another standing crop come April, with seed. PLEASE let us know.:)
Click to expand...

I agree but to 2 factors that make this not feasible is the fianacial aspect of taking a big filed of corn out of production. The other is that I have never witnessed birds using corn for roosting cover but have seen them use milo/cane plots for roosting in winter.
 
Prairie Drifter said:
U, some of your success will depend on how you plant the crop. The Siberian Millet above was planted pretty thick to encourage stem growth and maximize tonage. Planted a bit sparcer it should produce more head and a thicker stalk resulting in more standability. Also, mixing the different varieties usually results in a mixture of the various strengths of each plant type. It'll give you a better chance of having food available for a longer stretch.
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This year we did a few things different in the milo cane plots. One is we used flail mower to mulch residual litter and it did such good job I thought we could plant right into mowed litter. Seed germination was slow but it is coming and it a little spraser than last year so that mat turn into stalk strength and seed head production. We also applied fertilizer and residual herbicide. With the litter on top and the group so wet from saturation it is hard to tell how this would work in a dryer year but I am happy with what has come up so far. Broadcast corn/soybeans in other plots so could use roundup. Heading out there this week to plant a few more plots and maybe I can get some pictures to post here so you can see what i am talking about.
Hard to know what you ultimately have until fall and then again until spring.
 
1GB said:
Grain sorghum won't stay standing like corn?! I plated a little this year so I'll get to analyze it in person in about 10 months, but I thought it would.

What about other sorghums? I've got some egyptian wheat that I am hedging a bet on to do well through winter. I full expect it to fold over in half, but since it looks like it's on the way to 8' tall, 4' should be just fine. :cool:
Click to expand...

I use a short milo (3') and a tall milo (5') in a 12' drill both half and half so I have 12' short and 12' tall rows in the plot. I have found this to stand very well and decent to walk through yet the birds have plenty of hiding and escape cover. the 5' milo stands better in rough weather and is a little easier to deal with come spring.
 
UGuide, Do I understand you have a patch of Broadcasted RR corn and soy beans?
I almost tried a patch this year.
Can you keep us posted on how this works for you, and the birds?
 
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