My dove fields consist of five acres of ripe wheat that I spray with gly to kill any weeds. The doves are just now starting to use those mature seed heads. Keeping the weeds out is pretty important. Right next to that field is five acres of browntop millet. I am in a non ag area and I cant just plant a seed crop like millet and mow it two weeks before season - I have to attract - and hold doves - all summer long. Doves numbers will build on those mature wheat heads beginning now and then switch to the millet when it gets ripe in two months. I will probably spray the wheat with gly, twice to keep it clean. I have also had several spin feeders going since March, spinning out some corn every morning. Besides feeding deer, and providing hog hunting, there have been fifteen or twenty dove using each of those feeders for the last two months. I also have a feeder in the middle of the millet field feeding sunflower seed and cracked corn. That feeder is turned off a few weeks before dove season so no corn or sunflowers are left. In my state, normal faming practices as defined by the ag extension service allow for the top sowing of wheat on disked fields after the 15th of Aug. We disk the old wheat field and top sow fresh wheat onto the bare ground. That further holds doves. Mid Sept, we disk the millet field and top sow wheat. The wheat will eventually germinate in those fields and start the process over. I switch which field I keep the wheat in each summer to the field that was millet the previous year, so I can spray weeds that might have accumulated the year before. It is a seven month effort.
My duck ponds - as I call them - get millet. I plant them as the water recedes in the summer heat and drought. If an open mudflat is exposed, I walk it with a hand seeder. I plant chiwappa millet before the 15th of june with a 120 day maturity date. Then, I plant Japanese Millet or Golden Millet after that - depending on how much growing season is left. A lot of my duck pond area will grow smart weed - which must be dealt with or it will out compete the millet. I have an electric seeder mount rigged on the back of my ranger and a sprayer in the back of the ranger - so I can spray gly and plant millet at the same time. If it gets really dry, I have one duck pond I can pump up with a 10” crusafulli style pump. I will pump it up one day and turn around and pump the water off it the next day.
Hogs and deer tend not to eat millet if some acreage is available. We cant plant corn or milo here, because there wouldnt be anything left for ducks
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