Menu
What's new
By:
Filters

I feel like all I am doing is feeding the birds!

Victor Van Meter

Victor Van Meter

5 year old buck +
Seems like everything I planted for a fall food plot has been gourged on by birds of all shapes and sizes from turkeys to doves, crows seem to be the worst. I cultipacked rye and oats in after broadcasting hoping that would help, but they still dug it up. Anybody have remedies for this that won't get me in trouble with the law? Thanks.

VV
 
how big is the plot?

When did they get eaten,.. seeds? right after germanation?, or regular plants?

The devil is in the details
 
Seeds were eaten. About half acre a piece.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I’ve never ran into it. There is a sod farm not to far from me. They put out coyote silhouette decoys to keep the geese out.

I wonder if something like that would work long enough for it to germinate.
 
I don't use a cultipacker. I use my tractor tires! That creates a pretty firm seed bed. That makes the critters work more and seems to leave less seed exposed. I also like to put out a shallow planting like this just before a rain if I can help it at all.

as a kid we used to put corn inside a cardboard bow with the top open and let the birds line up on the box before they would hop into the box to eat....we then use a shot gun and see how many we can kill in one shot! I'm thinking I would upgrade to tannerite! Get some free fertilizer as well!
 
Victor Van Meter said:
Seems like everything I planted for a fall food plot has been gourged on by birds of all shapes and sizes from turkeys to doves, crows seem to be the worst. I cultipacked rye and oats in after broadcasting hoping that would help, but they still dug it up. Anybody have remedies for this that won't get me in trouble with the law? Thanks.

VV
Click to expand...
Broadcast 100 lbs of sunflowers with your plot seed. That'll keep 'em busy till your stuff germinates.
 
Try this,..

Take the seeds and dust them with an entire container of Cayenne pepper,.. dump the entire thing into the seed bag. shake rattle and roll it,.. then spread as normal.

Please note I have never tried this,.. but I have used this technique to keep critters from eating certain plants.

Good luck,.. I like the posting of predator nearby like a hawk on a pole. They sell those things to deter birds.

Oh and only seed before lots of incoming rain.
 
I don't think birds react to cayenne like mammals to. Cayenne peppers used to be found in a lot of parrot food.

The raptor decoys should work. My sister and mother use owl decoys to keep unwanted birds away.
 
Thanks for the ideas. I will def give some a try the next time I throw some seed.

VV


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
SD51555 said:
Broadcast 100 lbs of sunflowers with your plot seed. That'll keep 'em busy till your stuff germinates.
Click to expand...
I use a bag of feed corn for the same reason

S
 
This question of birds eating new sown seed has bothered me for eternity. It causes my brain to shrink and swell. How many seeds can a bird eat in a day and how many seeds are in a pound of whatever it is you are planting?

I know it happens and when it happens it looks bad, but is it?

Let’s take a flock of 100 doves (100!)! That’s a Hitchcock movie.

How much can they eat in a day? What I found says they eat 12% to 20% of their body weight daily and they weigh about 6oz. So the hundred Hitchcock movie doves eat about 4.75 lbs a day. Is it all coming from you seed? I dunno.

Let ask you, how much of the seed you sow do you think birds eat? 100%? 10%? More, less, or something in between? Should we worry about controlling birds or just adjust our seeding rates to account for loss? Birds aren’t the only factor that affects the percent of seeds sown that germinate.
 
I do see a good amount of doves, but the crows and turkeys I believe are my issue. They aren't my only problem with seeds not germinating, but they aren't helping either. It is easier to blame them!

VV
 
I too have questions about how much impact birds have, especially when you cultipack. We manage habitat for turkey as well as deer, and I have never had an issue with flocks of turkey impacting a fall plant. I see flocks in my fields all the time eating seed, especially after planting, but have never had a significant impact on germination. Now, deer eating and killing plants before the germinate is common here. We have crows galore and some doves as well.

What is the difference? I'm not sure. Perhaps it is habitat in general. I also have fields with plenty of weeds and most birds seem to prefer those. I find a lot more turkey and quail in weedy fields with a clover base than in open newly planted fields. We also have bicolor as field separators and it produces millions of tiny seeds. So, maybe it is a general habitat difference. Or maybe birds are blamed where there is another dominate factor. It is easy to make the leap...I see birds in my newly planted fields all the time...I got poor germination...must be those birds....

I do hear folks complain about turkey and such eating seed, but I've never really seen any good studies on how much impact they actually have. I'm not saying they don't, just that it is not clear to me that they do, and for whatever reason, I have not experienced it at my place...

Thanks,

Jack
 
Belchertown Bowman said:
Oh and only seed before lots of incoming rain.
Click to expand...

^ This. Unless the seeds will be hidden by thatch until they germinate, plant as close to a forecast rain event as possible. A flock of turkeys that have discovered top-sown sorghum in spring or wheat in fall will be in it all day every day until it's GONE.

yoderjac said:
I do hear folks complain about turkey and such eating seed, but I've never really seen any good studies on how much impact they actually have.
Click to expand...

I don't recall if it was on here or some other site but awhile back, someone actually did a somewhat scientific but unscientific study. I don't remember the exact numbers but they picked a single hen in a flock of say 18 turkeys, and counted the number of times she pecked what was assumed to be wheat in a newly sowed plot for 30 seconds. He then converted to minutes, factored in the full flock, and calculated how many seeds would be removed in no time flat. Wish I knew where to find the original because it would be relevant to this discussion.

At 15,000 seeds/pound of wheat, a 1/4 acre plot top sown at 50#/acre gets 12.5 pounds of seed (180,000 seeds). Rough math, a flock of 20 turkeys can pick up nearly a pound of seed in just 20 minutes. And that's not counting all the other tweety birds that discover it. Thinking it was maybe army worms or lack of rain I figured out one of my failed plot causes after the fact from a trail camera...turkeys were in it until the seed was gone.
 
Last edited:
One of the beauties of throw n mow is seed is less vulnerable to theft.
 
Tap said:
One of the beauties of throw n mow is seed is less vulnerable to theft.
Click to expand...

Perhaps that is the difference. I don't surface broadcast on bare ground. In my fields, there is a lot more food for turkey after broadcasting than the seed I broadcast. There are grasshoppers and weed seeds galore.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top