Quick Annual Nesting Cover

C

cyclonenation10

Well-known member
We've got our ~100 acres of CRP that we dormant seeded this Fall. We've also got three 3 acre food plots that we need to plant this Spring on the property as part of the CRP program. There is not much habitat around currently, and only a handful of birds, so 3 food plots is way over kill for now.

Was considering putting one or two of the food plots into something that could potentially create some fast nesting cover - such as a mix of cereal rye, oats, and spring wheat. Try and seed it late winter/early spring, and get it to grow enough to potentially provide some marginal nesting for the pheasants that are around. Since we will be mowing all of the CRP several times this summer, that won't be much use for nesting.

Anyway, just wanted to know what everyones thoughts were on this? Waste of time, or potentially beneficial? Any recommendations on what to plant? Eventually, the three food plots will all be some combination of corn/sorghum/sunflowers, but I just don't see the need to plant that much food this next year when there aren't very many birds around yet.
 
cyclonenation10 said:
We've got our ~100 acres of CRP that we dormant seeded this Fall. We've also got three 3 acre food plots that we need to plant this Spring on the property as part of the CRP program. There is not much habitat around currently, and only a handful of birds, so 3 food plots is way over kill for now.

Was considering putting one or two of the food plots into something that could potentially create some fast nesting cover - such as a mix of cereal rye, oats, and spring wheat. Try and seed it late winter/early spring, and get it to grow enough to potentially provide some marginal nesting for the pheasants that are around. Since we will be mowing all of the CRP several times this summer, that won't be much use for nesting.

Anyway, just wanted to know what everyones thoughts were on this? Waste of time, or potentially beneficial? Any recommendations on what to plant? Eventually, the three food plots will all be some combination of corn/sorghum/sunflowers, but I just don't see the need to plant that much food this next year when there aren't very many birds around yet.
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I would plant whatever crop you can get sprouted early and get some growth going
I have seen hens with a nest in 3-4 inch winter wheat.
Even if the early nest fails the hen will try and renest when the crop should be taller
 
Oats was the reason Iowa had such numbers in the past. Seed it as soon as the frost is out, some around here do it before.
 
McFarmer said:
Oats was the reason Iowa had such numbers in the past. Seed it as soon as the frost is out, some around here do it before.
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Given we have no snow pack now - would it be too early to use our grain drill to seed in the next week or two? Will oats do OK frost seeded or would we have better germination waiting ?
 
I would drill the oats after your areas average last frost date (late March/early April).
If you plant or broadcast them now, you risk a warm spell causing the seed to germinate, then a cold snap would kill the seedlings
 
cyclonenation10 said:
Given we have no snow pack now - would it be too early to use our grain drill to seed in the next week or two? Will oats do OK frost seeded or would we have better germination waiting ?
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Oats can stand a lot of cold temps, in fact, they thrive on it. Our average last frost date here is first week of May, grandad said if the oats aren’t in by the first week of April might as well forget them.

I seed oats in the garden as a cover crop in maybe September, they stay alive well into November, surviving several freezes. The big organic growers around here have heavy disk openers and drill into frozen ground from the middle of March.

They have a fairly large seed and need to be covered by soil, they don’t work themselves in like a clover seed.

Albert Lea seeds in Minnesota recommend first week of April.

Time makes a hero or a fool out of everyone, maybe you could do it now, maybe you couldn’t. Late March would be a sure thing.
 
It sounds like once the frost is gone, get them in. Fast growing, fast maturing, it sounds like a good choice.
 
I am fully convinced the demise of oats as a cash crop in Iowa is one major reason we don’t have the pheasants we did in the past.

Think about it, disk late March, early April and seed the oats. Don’t go back in until the middle of August to combine.

Then Jack rabbits. We had them by the literal truck load, we have photos of dad and a pickup load of rabbits taken to the mink farm. Jack rabbits nest out in the open, they loved the oat fields.
 
McFarmer said:
I am fully convinced the demise of oats as a cash crop in Iowa is one major reason we don’t have the pheasants we did in the past.

Think about it, disk late March, early April and seed the oats. Don’t go back in until the middle of August to combine.

Then Jack rabbits. We had them by the literal truck load, we have photos of dad and a pickup load of rabbits taken to the mink farm. Jack rabbits nest out in the open, they loved the oat fields.
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Makes complete sense. The only nesting birds really have now is CRP and road ditches. Hay fields seem to get cut too early for viable nesting, very little pasture. Just not producing many birds anywhere but CRP.
 
The loss of CRP will be brutally hard on pheasant numbers in Iowa. All the natural habitat is being removed at an alarming rate. Waterways/creeks being tiled, any vacant acreage are being cleared of buildings and trees...even some terraces put in 15-20 years ago are being pushed out to make it easier for the large equipment now being used. Expensive land is leading to the the elimination of much of our private land pheasant populations.
 
I drove past a place today in Nebraska. Out in the middle of nowhere. They had a high sprocket d9 like you see on gold rush, a big excavator, and a pan scraper. There was a couple huge piles of trees. All the draws and valleys were filled in. Looking like they were going to put in another center pivot. Really nice habitat around. In another 10-20 years it will all be barren crop land unless the wells go dry. I’ve seen other farms they were punching them deeper because they ran out of water
 
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