winter wheat
- Thread starter cowdog
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FCSpringer
Moderator
I think they do some but prefer corn or other grain better, the deer sure love it though.
M. R. Byrd
Well-known member
Hunt the edge where something else(milo stalks, CRP grass, etc.) joins winter wheat. It can be dynamite.
bobeyerite
New member
They do eat Winter Wheat. We grow a lot of it here and the Birds have crops full of the green stuff all the time......Bob
Winter wheat is very beneficial to pheasant's nutrition, especially the hens. Without a healthy mama pheasant to lay healthy eggs, no baby chick to grow up to become wild roosters.
Green winter wheat generally contains 18 to 26% protein and that 26% is at its highest in Feb. March and April and around 11% calcium and it also contains phosphorus and magnesium (natural laying mesh) both hens and roosters will eat it, but it is especially beneficial in its reproductive benefits to the hen pheasant in the spring time.
In addition to that in April, May and June wheat provides a green cushy place to hide a nest from many predators in an ocean of green.
Wheat is a big time benefit to pheasants. If you "Google Earth" and look down at E. Colorado, W. & SW. Kansas,Texas and Oklahoma panhandles (the central & southern plains) the combination of wheat and center pivot irrigation may be the "Goose that Lays the Golden Egg" for wild pheasant production. But you also need a wet (not flooding) El nina winter and spring along with summer showers. The el nina spring adds or enhances the green and protein content of the wheat. In dry years poor dry land wheat crop and poor pheasant hatch.
If the moisture setup that occurred in this winter/spring of 2009/2010 (in the central and southern plains) could repeat that exact pattern for three consecutive years we would see an enormous increase in the wild pheasant population.
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