CharBroiled
Active member
So guys, lately, I've been seeing more roosters in ditches than I have in years past. Maybe I'm just optimistic, but I'm thinking maybe there is hope.
Let it rain.
Let it rain.
More roosters?
- Thread starter CharBroiled
- Start date
Maybe their in the ditches looking for food and water! With the cover burned down, and poor harvest.
The fact that you are seeing more live healthy roosters is a great sign. The hens should be nesting in the wheat or any available grassy cover. Hopefully the hens can get a hatch off before the wheat is cut. Day old chicks and week old chicks can easily run around farm machinery during wheat cutting.
BritChaser
Well-known member
Wonderful news - I hope it is indeed a good omen.
Prairie Drifter
Well-known member
I'm a bit more of a pessimist myself. You may be seeing more in the ditch because they have been forced into more marginal habitat and that habitat provides less concealment. I do hope we get some improvement, but with a wheat crop that is poor and a lot of the NWSG being is poorer than normal condition, the outlook is strained at best. Having the rain just now occur at the normal peak of our annual hatch doesn't bode well toward making significant gains. I have no doubt that there will be places that see those gains. However, I expect that they will be of limited scope.
If you had written "hail" instead of "rain", I'd agree. However, I see the recent rains, where the hail was small or non-existant, as a positive. You know far more about this stuff than I do, so please don't take this as disagreement. I just want to know if, and why, I should now switch from the "rain dance" to the "no-more-rain" dance.
Prairie Drifter
Well-known member
That's not the point I was making. To have a normal or exceptional production year, the table needs to be set ahead of the chicks arriving! This moisture is definately a positive, but it won't have the positive impact it would have 30-60 days ago. The bugs and cover are going to be behind the broods. Keep the rain dance going, but don't shake it so hard we get hail or floods!
Prairie Drifter
Well-known member
Those grazed CRP fields and overgrazed pastures were in a similar shape as the wheat. Add to that, the insect population builds as the plant growth progresses. Those populations are behind and the early nests, which are often the most productive, may not have the protein available to meet their growth needs. On the flip side, the later nests may respond more favorably than normal due to the recent rains. Rarely, however, do those late gains balance out the early losses.
M. R. Byrd
Well-known member
Randy is a good guy. KDWPT has an exceptional group of good guys and gals. I have worked with many over the years. Our own Prairie Drifter is another good guy.:10sign:
Bilbo Baggins
Active member
BrownDogsCan2
Well-known member
Last year up that way there was a late hatch. I was seeing birds without color into mid December. I hope all the rain and green cover will keep the temps down a bit this summer, I think that's what did us in 2011.
Maybe I'm a bit of an optimist but whenever this subject comes up I think about Jurrasic park...when Jeff Goldblumm is stumbling through his speech about dinosaur asexual reproduction. "nature finds a way". If we could just gain a little bit a year when ideal spring conditions return the birds will take advantage.
Maybe I'm a bit of an optimist but whenever this subject comes up I think about Jurrasic park...when Jeff Goldblumm is stumbling through his speech about dinosaur asexual reproduction. "nature finds a way". If we could just gain a little bit a year when ideal spring conditions return the birds will take advantage.