Would like to get beyond the hype & website claims ... let me know your experiences ...
My experience - Definitely can withstand more browsing. They are also fairly drought resistant. I cant get any kind of regular ag beans to make it through the summer. At worst, eagle seed are eaten down 18” tall. At best, five foot tall. They dont make as many pods as ag beans - but do OK. Twice as expensive as ag beans. I plant three plots, totaling 16 acres.
There are lots of threads on here with detailed experiences. In general, Eagle beans are a great fit where the major stress period is summer. The real comparison is really Forage beans to Ag beans. While Eagle makes all kinds of benefits for their varieties, the overshadowing benefit is the RR gene they license. There are few options for RR forage beans. One can use Tyrone forage beans that are not RR but weed control is more difficult. RR forage beans are a great fit for heavy browse pressure situations. When I had heavy browse pressure, deer would kill ag beans before they would establish. They would get one bite per plant. With Forage beans, even with I only planted 3 acres, the deer kept my beans naked all summer so they never canopied but they could not kill them. I protected an acre one year with a Gallagher-style e-fence and once they hit the tipping point deer could not keep up with them and the beans were so tall and think, I had to bushhog lanes through them to surface broadcast a cover crop. Forage beans are indeterminate and stay green and attractive into our first 2 weeks of archery season in early October. The downside is that by the time they turn yellow, it is a bit late for surface broadcasting a traditional cover crop. The seed cost for these is high compared to ag beans but not as high as it first seems. The recommended planting rate for Eagle beans is less than ag beans, so, while more expensive, the cost per acre is not that much.
When I first started with soybeans, my browsing pressure was high enough I had to plant about 7 acres of Eagle beans (without protection) before they would canopy. As browse pressure diminished through doe harvest over the years, I was able to switch to ag beans and save some money for a few years.
Due to a recent pine thinning, we got an infestation of marestail. This was not a developed resistance due to use of gly, but this particular weed has a natural resistance. It got into our fields from the pines. So, this year I plan to focus on marestail control and won't be using soybeans. One key to successful beans in my area is planting time. If I plant to early and the soil is cold and wet, germination rates are low and the beans are slow. If I wait too long, Does have dropped their fawns and are bring them to the fields so pre-establishment pressure increases. If I get the timing right, does are still recluse in cover while the beans are establishing but this is a pretty small planting window that can quickly be closed by weather. 24D which controls marestail has soil residual effects on soybeans which further tightens the window. It can also germinate in the spring and fall and can grow from previous year's root systems. So, I will be planting buckwheat as a summer crop this year because of the wide planting window and its smother effect.
Our deer populations are starting to rebound and our habitat improvement has increased the BCC. So, once the marestail is under control, I'll probably go back to Eagle beans.
The pods are small on ag beans. In my area, deer only use the pods if we have a mast crop failure but turkey hammer them all fall and winter. If winter is your major stress period, I'd probably opt for ag beans as long as you can get them to establish.
Thanks,
Jack
SC ... do you fertilize? Did you use Glysophate for weed control?
SC ... do you fertilize? Did you use Glysophate for weed control?
Jack ... I didn't get my beans in until early June last year so my results were limited. We also have marestail so this year I will let the marestail emerge along with other weeds and spray with gly. Are you saying the 24D if sprayed before planting beans will stunt their growth?
Why would you want to keep deer out of beans during the growing season - I typically don't hunt my beans - maybe in December if they made a good crop of seed - I WANT my deer to eat my beans during May, June, and July when the does are lactating and the bucks are growing antler. If I was only wanting something to hunt, I wouldn't be planting beans. Our hunting plots are wheat and clover.
Did you see the photos above of my Eagle Forage beans planted in small food plots? I have a pretty high deer density here and small plots of beans just don't ever amount to much. I have 16 acres of food plots so I grow a variety of different crops. We don't even plant beans here until June when our soil temps get up to 60 degrees. Do you see the clover rings around my food plots. I have those around every one of my food plots so they have high protein legumes until they go dormant in winter. We don't have summer stress on our plots like you folks down south. Summer is a time of plenty.
According go Jeff Sturgis, in the northern deer range, there is already 5 times more food available to deer than what they can use - without ever planting a food plot. Our limiting factor here is winter and early spring. While I do provide some summer forage, my goal is to grow enough groceries to feed the deer as far into winter as I can. I also grow cereal grains, brassicas, sugar beets and I have grown plenty of corn as well. They don't need more summer forage from soybean leaves here but the bean pods can provide a much needed boost during late fall and winter...if I can get the bean plants to make it beyond summer.
More proof that everywhere is different. While our southern deer have plenty to eat year round, without any food plots - I do believe providing a high protein food source just before and after fawning season makes it easier on the does. Whether it actually adds an inch of growth to antlers, I don't know - but I would like to think the high protein values in the beans help that a little. But, I also want every deer in the area to make my property home - and providing them an easily available summer feed source helps keep them on my land. I always have big bachelor herds of bucks in my beans. I feel like the more time deer spend on my place, the more time they will spend here during season, also. I would not attempt a bean plot on my ground any smaller than 3 or 4 acres. I don't plant beans with the anticipation of hunting deer in them.
I will say this about eagle seed beans on my place - while they are the only bean I have ever planted that will make it through summer deer browsing, they have been inconsistent seed producers - for me. I have had soybeans five foot tall with pods that were empty of seed or only small disk shaped seeds. I have had years when they produced a bumper crop of seed. Eagle seed tells me that is a result of excessive browsing on the forage and all the plant's energy goes into forage production instead of seed production. I am a little skeptical about that when your beans are taller than your tractor. I understand that if they are 15" tall and heavily browsed. I top seed wheat into my beans at leaf drop in mid October. The deer we shoot in Dec - Feb are eating green - not beans - for the most part.
What does it cost to fence a five acre plot?
I plant RR Northern managers mix Eagle beans and RR ag beans. My total acreage is about 12 acres, 10 ag and 2 Eagle. I want the deer to eat the Eagle beans to keep the pressure off the ag beans. The primary purpose of the ag beans is to produce an over winter food source for the deer. Even with the Eagles, the ag beans still get browsed, just not as heavily. So they produce more bean pods which is my goal for the ag beans. My Eagle beans got 12 to 16 inches tall with the browsing pressure. Each time the deer ate a stem and leaf, another stem seemed to replace it. The Eagle beans lasted until the first hard frost, which was quite late last season. This season I am increasing the amount of Eagle beans I am going to plant to 3 acres.
Are you planting at 140 K seeds per acre JFK or more than that?