Strip Disking

[cyclonenation10]

Probably belongs in the Habitat Forum, but seems like posts get more eyeballs in the general forum.

My question is regarding strip disking. Has this practice been utilized by any on their farms or acres under their management to improve the habitat quality on existing CRP acres for pheasant/quail? I am located in eastern Iowa, and the primary birds we are managing for are pheasants, with a few partridge here and there. The majority of our acres are pretty heavily dominated by native warm season grasses, with some forbes mixed in. Probably 80/20 or so in most cases. While this serves as pretty good nesting, the brooding component is certainly lacking. We've recently put our firebreaks and such into clover/alfalfa to try and help with that, and we are burning everything on a 3 year rotation (~1/3 of the property every year). I am a big believer in burning, but I worry that it still ends up quite dense after year 1, with little ability for pheasant chicks to potentially move around and forage for bugs and such.

After seeing just how good of brooding cover our 2 year old food plots tend to produce, I can't help but think we'd be better off incorporating some strip disking into our mid contract management practices alongside burning. It seems like the best time to do so would be in the late Fall for a better forb response. What has everyone's experience been with this? Here is the pros/cons list I can think of so far..



Pros:
More bare ground/annual weeds - should lead to better poult survival/recruitment into the Fall
Increased plant diversity overall
Potentially better control of small trees invading CPR acres (compared to Spring burning) ? Would disking every 3rd year or so be enough to help tree encroachment?
Better head start in the Spring for the cover (since disking would be done in the Fall) for cover to grow up and potentially provide better nesting/brooding more quickly than a Spring burn.

Cons:
Reduced cover in the winter (not a huge concern for me, as we've got plenty of heavy winter cover, food plots, shelter belts, willow/plum thickets, etc.)
Destroying all of our native grasses - does disking to ~60% bare soil kill the native grasses/forbs or just set them back some?
Time/Money - We have the equipment, and outside of some money in fuel, time would be the only other cost. Not worried about this.

Any feedback would be much appreciated. Thinking about incorporating this practice into a small chunk of our non CRP acres (old pasture and such) to see how it does and then looking to get NRCS approval to conduct the practices on our CRP acres going forward. It seems the more and more I read up on pheasants, quail, turkey, etc., suitable brood rearing seems to be the most limiting factor in most cases - and with our dense grasses, this seems like a pretty easy and cost-effective approach.

 

[cyclonenation10]

One last concern to add to the list.. turning smooth walking ground into really rough ground. How would one go about "leveling" off the ground after disking so it is not such an ankle breaker to walk through?

 

[SDinWI]

It sounds like it could definitely meet your objectives. I like your idea of starting small and expanding. I’ll share my experience.

The first pic was a field of mine covered in brome. There may have been some forbs mixed in but was probably 90% brome. It didn’t provide food, it was pretty short cover for wildlife, and it was useless in winter with decent snow cover. Not the best pic, but you get the gist.

Last year, I wanted to try a food plot for the birds and had the field disced. The food plot didn’t really work on due to my prep, but the discing wasn’t a waste. I let the field go, and you can see the result in the next 3 pics. A flush of broadleaves- pretty much all ragweed and milkweed. With the canopy nature of the broadleaves and the open ground underneath, I’d have to think broods were running around in there throughout the summer. I was definitely surprised at the response since the field was pure brome before, but the seed bed just needed to be released. I think I likely could’ve had a similar response with a timely herbicide application in the spring.

Regarding some of your questions as to discing in helping with the woody encroachment, I’m hesitant. Discing the aspen here would just result in a flush of new aspen on the edges. You would really need to treat them to handle encroachment. I think fire would be a better solution for that but let someone tell me otherwise.

Not sure if there is a great answer to leveling the ground besides doing a light discing. I suppose you could go over it again and pack or roll if you wanted.

I would think a light discing would just set back your natives. It is an option for mid contract management, and I’m sure the NRCS wouldn’t give the option if it killed the natives that are required. But, you might want to confirm that

A potential negative could be that what takes over in your disced areas could be not what you want i.e. invasives that you have to fight by spot spraying. I didn’t experience this, but like you are considering, it’d be a good idea to do a small test first.

 

[remy3424]

Ankle buster! We had our tenant use a ripper disk to create fire breaks a couple years ago...those areas break your ankles and you real don't even want to to drive the Gator over those areas very far either. Some disks have some type of clod busters on them...this disk ripper really needed a traditional disk to follow it...and that would have been like riding a bull at the rodeo! It did open things up.

 

[cyclonenation10]

Ankle buster! We had our tenant use a ripper disk to create fire breaks a couple years ago...those areas break your ankles and you real don't even want to to drive the Gator over those areas very far either. Some disks have some type of clod busters on them...this disk ripper really needed a traditional disk to follow it...and that would have been like riding a bull at the rodeo! It did open things up.

I am thinking maybe a few passes deep, and then one or two light passes over the top to smooth it out some might help? I just can't help but think the pros definitely outweigh the cons. Even if its just a few 30-40 yard strips here and there. Our cover is DENSE. I can't imagine chicks being able to move around very well. Should be good nesting, but if they can't get to good brooding cover then that doesn't do much good IMO.

 

[cyclonenation10]

It sounds like it could definitely meet your objectives. I like your idea of starting small and expanding. I’ll share my experience.

The first pic was a field of mine covered in brome. There may have been some forbs mixed in but was probably 90% brome. It didn’t provide food, it was pretty short cover for wildlife, and it was useless in winter with decent snow cover. Not the best pic, but you get the gist.

Last year, I wanted to try a food plot for the birds and had the field disced. The food plot didn’t really work on due to my prep, but the discing wasn’t a waste. I let the field go, and you can see the result in the next 3 pics. A flush of broadleaves- pretty much all ragweed and milkweed. With the canopy nature of the broadleaves and the open ground underneath, I’d have to think broods were running around in there throughout the summer. I was definitely surprised at the response since the field was pure brome before, but the seed bed just needed to be released. I think I likely could’ve had a similar response with a timely herbicide application in the spring.

Regarding some of your questions as to discing in helping with the woody encroachment, I’m hesitant. Discing the aspen here would just result in a flush of new aspen on the edges. You would really need to treat them to handle encroachment. I think fire would be a better solution for that but let someone tell me otherwise.

Not sure if there is a great answer to leveling the ground besides doing a light discing. I suppose you could go over it again and pack or roll if you wanted.

I would think a light discing would just set back your natives. It is an option for mid contract management, and I’m sure the NRCS wouldn’t give the option if it killed the natives that are required. But, you might want to confirm that

A potential negative could be that what takes over in your disced areas could be not what you want i.e. invasives that you have to fight by spot spraying. I didn’t experience this, but like you are considering, it’d be a good idea to do a small test first.
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That is exactly what I would like to create. Even some thistles and stuff, while not ideal, have to be better that dense, sod bound grasses.

 

[remy3424]

If you burn a third of it every year, I think you will be providing plenty of brooding cover.

 

[matto]

First of all, my experiences are from central Kansas. We get much less moisture and I would assume the soils are much different. Your mileage may vary.

This first quarter has very sandy soils. When we bought it 7-8 years ago it was CRP with just a couple of years left on the contract. We applied to re-enroll, but didn't make the cut. As you can see, we broke out two big chunks to grow crops and left 3 strips of the CRP grass. You can also see that we have done some strip disking in the grass. I have our tenant disk a strip every year, being careful not to overlap last year's disked area with this year's disking. The grasses need to recover. He does one pass with the disk in late October. We've done this for maybe three years now. The NWSG seems to recover well. I am getting a good response from the forbs, but not great. I think disking at a different time might give me more of the forbs I want (kochia). Your concerns about uneven ground are real. It's not the best to walk on, but it must look like a mountain range to pheasant chicks. I'm hesitant to do multiple passes for fear of damaging the NWSG. However, for the hens nesting right now and chicks being born in the next month, the strips that were disked in October of 2022 might be pretty good. The stuff disked in October of 2023 is too thin and too uneven. Bird numbers have been disappointing, but I'm not ready to conclude that it's not working. It's been extremely dry the last couple of years.



This next photo is the west edge of a quarter that's about 20 miles from the first one. Moisture is about the same, but the soils are much less sandy on this one. Even so, they are probably still sandier than yours. Anyway, that west edge is mostly more recently expired CRP. Area 1 was part of the CRP, but was dominated by western wheat grass. Area 2 was not part of the CRP and was brome (I think). Regardless, I asked my tenant (a different tenant) to spray and disk both areas to prep for replanting to NWSG and forbs. They were planted in February or March of 2022, which was terrible timing. It was D1/D2 when we planted, hit D3 by September, D4 in November. You get the idea. Area 1 didn't show much from the planting, but has come up nicely in kochia and annual sunflower. Area 2 has shown some forbs that we planted, some forbs that we didn't plant, and some sideoats grama. I'm still hopeful that we'll see more grasses this fall. We tried again with another area on the north west corner in March of 2023. Again, I'm not sure if the grass is going to take, but the kochia really took off there. Unlike the other quarter, this one has been a consistent producer of both pheasants and quail.

 

[cyclonenation10]

First of all, my experiences are from central Kansas. We get much less moisture and I would assume the soils are much different. Your mileage may vary.

This first quarter has very sandy soils. When we bought it 7-8 years ago it was CRP with just a couple of years left on the contract. We applied to re-enroll, but didn't make the cut. As you can see, we broke out two big chunks to grow crops and left 3 strips of the CRP grass. You can also see that we have done some strip disking in the grass. I have our tenant disk a strip every year, being careful not to overlap last year's disked area with this year's disking. The grasses need to recover. He does one pass with the disk in late October. We've done this for maybe three years now. The NWSG seems to recover well. I am getting a good response from the forbs, but not great. I think disking at a different time might give me more of the forbs I want (kochia). Your concerns about uneven ground are real. It's not the best to walk on, but it must look like a mountain range to pheasant chicks. I'm hesitant to do multiple passes for fear of damaging the NWSG. However, for the hens nesting right now and chicks being born in the next month, the strips that were disked in October of 2022 might be pretty good. The stuff disked in October of 2023 is too thin and too uneven. Bird numbers have been disappointing, but I'm not ready to conclude that it's not working. It's been extremely dry the last couple of years.

View attachment 8184

This next photo is the west edge of a quarter that's about 20 miles from the first one. Moisture is about the same, but the soils are much less sandy on this one. Even so, they are probably still sandier than yours. Anyway, that west edge is mostly more recently expired CRP. Area 1 was part of the CRP, but was dominated by western wheat grass. Area 2 was not part of the CRP and was brome (I think). Regardless, I asked my tenant (a different tenant) to spray and disk both areas to prep for replanting to NWSG and forbs. They were planted in February or March of 2022, which was terrible timing. It was D1/D2 when we planted, hit D3 by September, D4 in November. You get the idea. Area 1 didn't show much from the planting, but has come up nicely in kochia and annual sunflower. Area 2 has shown some forbs that we planted, some forbs that we didn't plant, and some sideoats grama. I'm still hopeful that we'll see more grasses this fall. We tried again with another area on the north west corner in March of 2023. Again, I'm not sure if the grass is going to take, but the kochia really took off there. Unlike the other quarter, this one has been a consistent producer of both pheasants and quail.

View attachment 8185

Good stuff. Thanks for sharing. As much as we "like" to see certain species of grasses and forbes, I don't think the birds care near as much as we do. Some of my best hunting has been in big fields of almost nothing buy giant ragweed. Ugly, yes, but great habitat, absolutely.

We get plenty of moisture in this part of Iowa, so getting the grasses to grow and the vegetation to grow back quickly generally is not a concern.

 

[matto]

As much as we "like" to see certain species of grasses and forbes, I don't think the birds care near as much as we do. Some of my best hunting has been in big fields of almost nothing buy giant ragweed. Ugly, yes, but great habitat, absolutely.

100%. Kochia and annual sunflower is great pheasant habitat in Kansas, as is ragweed and a host of other stuff. If those areas grew that stuff every year I'd be super happy. But those areas won't grow that stuff year after year without management. Unfortunately that quarter gets cedars from the west, locust from the north, and cheat grass and foxtail from who-knows-where. Natural succession will turn those areas into something else over time, maybe, probably, something I won't like. I'm just trying to guide it to NWSG and native forbs.