Disking
In much of the central US, when you maintain grasslands over time, they tend toward becoming more and more high successional. The effects of (well managed) grazing and burning tend to benefit the grass and squeeze out the forbs. As a result, the lower successional plants that quail depend upon for brood rearing insects and fall/winter seed/food become limited. The quickest way to replace the brood cover is with a light to moderate disking, generally done in Oct/Nov here to promote the broadleaf forbs that most benefit quail. Other ways are using cattle attractors to disturb the soil and grass to the benefit of forbs. That might be moving your oiler, mineral box, tank, bale feeder, or other cattle attractor around to promote those forbs. You can do it intentionally by concentrating cattle, by patch burning, and various other methods. I choose disking because of a lack of manpower and flexibility within our grazing contracts to use cattle as the disturbance. If I weren't on such sandy soils, I might use patch burning. I just fear getting this sand moving in larger tracts if I were to hit a dry year. Also, by disking, I can sculpt my brood rearing cover so it is adjacent to nesting and escape cover, making the most out of it. In many parts of the country it is an accepted mid term management practice on CRP acres. For CRP, you might even want to broadcast a legume into the disked strip. Alfalfa, clover, sanfoin, medic, and lespedeza are some options for that. 10-25% coverage is good. If you did 10% per year, you would see benefits out of each treatment for about 3-5 years before it returned to grass. If you move your strip over each year, you have several different stages all in close proximity to one another creating the best possible array of habitat.
