No, ,pheasants, quail, huns, are all dependent on hard winter cover. Nose plugs are restricted to Prairie Chickens, Sharptails, ruffed grouse, and sage grouse, I am sure all the grouse have , all will burrow into snow, when ice storms happen you will find dead pheasants with their beaks broken from ice sickles, and freezing. It's terrible to see. I have seen sharptails playing around in frigid temperatures with wilting winds, and snow and ice falling while pheasants are struggling to survive. Huns are tougher than quail, and the Huns are regionally migratory both up and down, can be at the snow line, with tougher conditions are down 3-5 thousand feet in the creek bottoms. The Prairie grouse will literally fly miles like 35-60 miles to find better current habitat, then return when circumstances improve. They get as high as a duck, and soar miles!
mix
- Thread starter wesslpointer
- Start date
I believe that there is no possible solution for loss in alfalfa. Good pasture adjoining, hopefully will be a benefit. For sure it's the best idea I have heard! It's the chicken and the egg story, if farmers don't farm alfalfa then hens won't nest in it, but because it's there and there are broods produced there, more than would not be produced without it! I think we get bound up in simplified statements of facts which short our goal. Sure I hope someone has a brainstorm, and development to avoid casualties, or a new varieties of alfalfa to change the dynamics. I know they are developing strains with better protein in the stem, currently, most of which is fiber. So no alfalfa means no pheasant casualties, but the fact is there is alfalfa, it produces good habitat and pheasants. We will not save every hen or brood. Even in horse drawn equipment days, we had casualties, might as well try to pry the next hen out of a fox jaws, or damn the weather when we have a cold rain!
I agree, that is why I cut it as early as possible to give the hen as much chance as I can on her second try.
wesslpointer
New member
I wonder if this would help? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conservation_headland
wesslpointer
New member
Timothy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy-grass
For smaller acres might want to look into timothy hay it brings a high price with horse owners.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timothy-grass
I am sure all farmers know this. I use alfalfa/ orchard grass, early, and I have mowed timothy, but it's pretty much a one shot deal per season or it won't persevere in the stand. I doubt that it will fill the bill, here it is the last grass to become mature. I am not sure that timothy planting would encourage many hens to nest? Quail sure! Orchard has a quick start which mimics alfalfa. I would do fine, for pheasants, but it gets mowed early like the alfalfa, no net gain in nesting. Neither will supplant the value of an alfalfa cutting. alfalfa is graded, into RFV sold by the ton, to EVERYBODY. You do realize that cows have digestive system which uses bypass nitrogen? There gain is better on high grade alfalfa, than timothy at around 13% protein. You can over feed horses easily on alfalfa, and horses should get premium cut alfalfa, but not premium RFV, a little lower on the protein and stemmy, for a single digestive system. But there are lots of Lady horse owners who by that "rabbit" food to feed horses, and pay the vet to try to save them! Best legume I like to use is Lespedeza, but, it's hard to bail, a summer crop, one baling,and implants no nitrogen into the soil, and it's stems are leaf carriers, no food value, shatter at the drop of a hat, lots of time for quail and pheasants to nest, has limited appeal here, better in racehorse country, this is pasture lespedeza, not Surrieca, or Korean, nobody should plant that ever! Bottom line is it's hard to convince any farmer to abandon a better cash crop, change his procedures, risk income, or rather forsake income to accentuate pheasant reproduction! God willing some do!
Downtown Bang!
Member
A few of my favorite (fun to hunt & productive) walk-in areas only have 20-40 acres of CRP. They tend to have some winter cover (shelter belts or a small slough) close by, active crop production and maybe a weedy waterway or some low areas that can't be cropped every year. Basically they are very diverse and the CRP is usually "young" and of very high quality. Just feels like to me that maybe targeting options like this could pay more dividends and could stretch the available dollars for conservation.
Will be very interested to hear how your smaller parcels are working out come nest season.
wesslpointer
New member
If timothy is a perennial and is cut one time "LATE", brings top $ as horse feed, why would it not be right for the 30 acres nesting that we are talking about ? Why would it not pay for its self and the planting of winter cover/food mix, if CRP paid land rent. Why would pheasants not nest in it? We are not talking about commercial farming but making habitat and "resting/recharging" work on smaller acres.
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mnmthunting
Banned
I'm pretty sure that most all of us have returned to some of our favorite CRP fields or WMAs only to find they have have been mowed and bailed.
When you guys talk about baling timothy, alfalfa or anything else late, that's what you have, a baled up grassland. Not good for pheasants or hunting.
And for sure, stubble during Winter, Spring when hens are looking for nesting habitat stubble is of NO value. Pheasants need UNDISTURBED grasslands for
nesting and brood raising. Old growth grass is imperative to produce any kind of pheasant populations.
So raise hay, (I've raised a lot of it)
If you want to raise pheasants? Take an area of poorer soil, a hillside, an area of high erosion, riparian areas. Plant the mix I've mentioned and walk away, leave it for the birds. Whether it's 5 acres 10 more is better. :thumbsup:
NO spraying, NO mowing, NO burning. Leave it to the birds.
Come mid Oct, You and the pups, go in, check things out. :cheers:
When you guys talk about baling timothy, alfalfa or anything else late, that's what you have, a baled up grassland. Not good for pheasants or hunting.
And for sure, stubble during Winter, Spring when hens are looking for nesting habitat stubble is of NO value. Pheasants need UNDISTURBED grasslands for
nesting and brood raising. Old growth grass is imperative to produce any kind of pheasant populations.
So raise hay, (I've raised a lot of it)
If you want to raise pheasants? Take an area of poorer soil, a hillside, an area of high erosion, riparian areas. Plant the mix I've mentioned and walk away, leave it for the birds. Whether it's 5 acres 10 more is better. :thumbsup:
NO spraying, NO mowing, NO burning. Leave it to the birds.
Come mid Oct, You and the pups, go in, check things out. :cheers:
I don't know how much more I can tell you, if you bale it, you need somewhere for birds to go. Kansas used the skip row farming with wheat, 30 feet of new wheat, 30 feet of last years wheat and weeds to grow huge crops of pheasants. but some areas are undisturbed annually. If you leave it alone, as a buffer with no agricultural activity, would be better. If we are doing that, no need to worry about timothy. Timothy is not a great cash producer, I have done it! LOW yield! average cash value, here timothy is a little better than prairie hay, ( like Bluestem) I'll leave it to you to champion that to producers, but it's a non starter. If you are leaving it to the birds there are all types of better alternatives, just letting it go to weeds is probably #1. No cash and no input, subsidized by ag. subsidies or directly by caring sportsmen.
Hi, I don't plant hay to sell, I feed all my hay to my own livestock. I plant alfalfa because I want alfalfa to feed. It is great feed with high protien. Timothy is good horse feed but I only have four horses but 175 cows so it needs to be alfalfa. The alfalfa is only 70 acres compared to about 1000 acres of native grass and or CRP so it is not that critical here. That may not be true everywhere. The good news is the pheasants are doing well this winter so far. I watched about 150 fly out of my neighbors trees into my CRP today. That encourages me for the future.
wesslpointer
New member
http://www.fullsource.com/tenax-82094004/ Would putting up a snow fence on theses stand alone food plots get the majority of pheasants though a bad winter in the Dakotas? Using fiberglass poles and plastic netting it would be inexpensive ,portable/reusable. Again trying to find a way to make a 40ac work.
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mnmthunting
Banned
Yup, good idea. The more snow you can keep from drifting in your food plot the better. On a n average snow fall Winter the snow fence would work very well. Even on the bad Winters I see nothing bad about your plans. :thumbsup:
wesslpointer
New member
Flap
Karen L. Fullen
State Biologist
USDA-Natural Resources Conservation Service
According to the reference listed below, greater sage-grouse occasionally hybridize with sharp-tailed grouse and blue grouse. There is no mention of hybridization with ring-necked pheasant. Many references are made to sage-grouse burrowing under snow in winter, but there is no mention of a nasal flap or plug that makes them specially adapted to cold temperatures.
Karen L. Fullen
State Biologist
USDA-Natural Resources Conservation Service
That's what we have for Government Biologists! I researched this for five minutes, Look for "feathered nostrils" in grouse. A good article is the conservation commission of Alberta, Canada, about sharptails, lots of articles about ruffed grouse, and World of Grouse, relates that ALL grouse have this, they are retractable due to hot weather and ventilation, but block the ice in winter storms. I assume you disbelieve me, I heard this from old-timey grouse hunters, and have witnessed it myself. Makes them superior in a habitat they were evolved for. pheasants and quail will need hard cover, especially as you go north. By the way, look up regional migration, the grouse book relates that the prairie grouse, and western grouse, blues, Franklin, spruce grouse have been known to fly 100 miles to find better winter habitat. I would assume any credible biologist would know this, the feathers deflect and blowing snow and ice like a plug, as I said, pheasant will need to turn away from the blast of ice, allowing for ice penetration under their feathers, and freezing to death, if they face the storm, their nostrils get plugged and they suffocate, nostrils and top bill sometime shattered from expanding ice and humidity. Grouse a few feet away, survive. pheasants are not unique, quail and huns are the same, but quail will get into "hard" cover like a big brush pile, or in some ones machine shed, and are a lot smaller, and covey birds to create heat. All advantages over the pheasant.
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wesslpointer
New member
HA ha Shes the head "turkey" This is just the type of person we put in charge of are game birds and wonder why its gone strate to ----. What I was looking at was to see if there is a way to breed pheasants with "nostril feathers" http://science.nature.nps.gov/im/un...ite/species_descriptions/rugr_description.htm
wesslpointer
New member
$300 a ton
At $300 a ton one cutting a year of timothy after pheasant nesting should cover all the seed and farming costs of a 40ac habitat plot. http://www.ranchland.com/blog/?p=142
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mnmthunting
Banned
For one thing if Sharptails and Sage Grouse Hybridize it would be so very seldom. What a screw up of nature that would be.
I'll just say maybe. There are still those that want to burn the prairie. Prairie fires kill sagebrush. Sage brush is a MUST for the Sage Grouse. DUH. Still they want to burn the prairie. (I'm only talking the Feds here)
State people and cattle people hate the scorched earth stuff going on with the Feds.
Oldandnew is correct, the sharptails and Grey partridge will get up in the air and move with the wind finding a food and some good woody cover. So, don't worry about these species.
Pheasants for sure don't enjoy this instinct/evolution that other mountain and prairie upland birds have.
Your mistake " high quality" forage. If you wait till the breeding season is over, you will have tatamount to straw. It will be suitable for foundered horses who's calorie restrictions necessitate this forage. But the value based on protein content would decrease rapidly once it blooms, decreasing the value of the crop. By the way, I have NEVER seen pure timothy sell for $300.00 per ton, maybe if it were certified, for USDA backcountry wilderness areas. $150.00 is more accurate, and there are costs to produce that crop! If you are going to plan on Timothy @ $300 per ton, you will need a high podium to preach from! Farming just for pheasants is a not going to break even. It's folly to assume otherwise If you feed all the hay to your livestock, assuming that the livestock will sell for a profit, it gets closer, but even livestock equation will compound risk, they die, the market is narrow, it's difficult just to raise pasture for cattle, and sell at a profit, let alone pheasants, ask any cattle farmers here! Face it pheasants, huns, and quail are wasted area birds, make do on margins, better of focusing on areas which can be tailor-made for the bird habitat, and for get profit, call it a donation. I doubt the USFW refuges make money.