Perennials and AMP grazing
Best way / crop to add OM to soil?
- Thread starter Bowsnbucks
- Start date
Bowsnbucks
5 year old buck +
What's that??
Telemark
5 year old buck +
It's high-intensity rotational grazing. You divide your pasture into several sections and move the animals around from one section to another. They only spend a short period of time on each section, and they pretty much eat everything in the section where they are grazing. You time the rotation according to the number of animals and the type of forage. If you're really ambitious, you can have chickens in the paddock after the grazers.
This process creates ideal circumstances for the soil ecosystem to form and thrive, which basically turns the upper part of the subsoil into topsoil. It's one of the main techniques used in regenerative agriculture. Just don't use goats.
Catscratch
5 year old buck +
Always said every plotter should own a few cows!
Bowsnbucks
5 year old buck +
No rotational grazing by our deer!!! It is what it is. What we have now by planting plots is much better than sour, wire-y, scrabbly grass - which is what we had before plotting.
Tree Spud
5 year old buck +
I am terminating all of my clover this spring. With fresh clover emerging every spring, almost impossible even if you drill seed into to get other crops established. You would have to disc the clover over to allow other seeds to compete and that conflicts with attempting to establish cover crops for the purpose of soil building.
Buckhunter10
5 year old buck +
This is true but we can aid our deer and plots by controlling browse pressure. If deer are removing more than 2/3rd above ground biomass we are reducing photosynthesis capture from happening. If around 2/3rs and diverse, cool season annuals - we will continue photosynthesis capture and root exudation = good stuff for soil.
So if the former is occurring - I like to say, This means we should shoot more deer, plant more food and/or sometimes both!
Tree Spud
5 year old buck +
I should have also mentioned I will be planting a mix of cow peas, sudan sorghum, and sunhemp. Terminating in late June early July, then drilling in a fall plot mix.
Why no goats?
Bowsnbucks
5 year old buck +
This was one of our worst years for getting deer. They show up on cams - but at night. Even though we seem to have a good number of deer on cams, they don't show during the day - even with driving the woods. We can certainly improve on our plots, we have a few areas that we haven't planted.
What do you mean when you said, "If around 2/3 and diverse, cool season annuals - we will continue photosynthesis capture and root exudation = good stuff for soil" ?? Are you saying plant more COOL SEASON ANNUALS?? (as opposed to perennial crops) Can you give examples of what you're talking about?? THANKS!!!
Buckhunter10
5 year old buck +
That was my typo. Trying to type on a phone is hard hahah. Sorry about that. I meant to say “if 2/3rds remains - and it’s a diverse mix good things happens as far as photosynthesis capture and root exudation”.
Now I say cool season annuals because I am assuming most are running more cool season annuals vs. perennials for deer. However, clover - alfalfa, etc. are used for deer management and the same grazing rules apply. As @Tree Spud mentioned when running perennials it becomes difficult to add a ton of diversity (although they have their place). This discussion would be different if we were talking cows where we can have diverse pastures of perennials that cows will actually eat.
All that said - Dale Strickland and Oklahaoma state have some great research on this topic. Oklahoma state did the grazing research that showed the photosynthesis shutdown once a grazing limit was reached.
Maximizing diversity
Above and below ground biomass
Reducing disturbance
Knowing your context (time money soil samples)
Etc.
Are all things that help in making our soils more efficient.
AT
Telemark
5 year old buck +
They're a headache. You can use them if you know what you're doing, but if you're not familiar with their habits they can be hard to keep under control.
yoderjac
5 year old buck +
That happens to us on a yearly basis. It is directly related to hunting pressure. The habitat and hunting pressure combine to have an impact on deer. When we first bought the property, deer bedded on a neighboring property that had been cut and had naturally begun to regenerate in harwoods. It was canopying but had a high stem count for good cover. Our pines at the time were a food desert as half had a heavy canopy and the other half had just canopied. Our food plots were the only game in town. Deer moved from bedding to food and were relatively easy to hunt as they had to use daylight hours to get sufficient food most years in spite of hunting pressure. In some years, we have a heavy mast crop, deer would not need our plots as much and would avoid hunting pressure by feeding in the fields more at night.
I've got a wireless camera network that runs 24/7/365. Here is an interesting chart from that data:
While our picture total deer picture count does vary somewhat seasonally the percent of those picture that are daytime seems directly related to pressure. This chart had the data averaged over several years. The key is the yellow line. You see from May through September it over 40% and often over 50% (right side scale). Our archery season starts in early Oct (vertical green line). You can see the percentage of daytime picks drop into the 30s. Our muzzleloader season begins in early Nov (orange vertical line. You begin to see a more dramatic change as more hunters hit the woods. Then the big push is when our general firearms season begins (vertical red line). Daytime pics drop below 20%. Our season ends in early January. Notices how it takes several months for deer to recover from the pressure and showing more daytime activity.
As we have managed for deer, we have made things WORSE! We have much more native deer food and much better cover and habitat now. This makes deer react to pressure even more. Because deer can get quality foods while staying in cover, it takes much less hunting pressure for them to adapt, and eat native foods in good cover during shooting hours and then venture out into our plots at night. We now have much less well defined movement between bedding and food. Deer are harder to hunt. Managing for deer (QDM) is not necessarily managing for the best hunting.
Thanks,
Jack
Wind Gypsy
5 year old buck +
Maybe not relevant to changes this year if nothing has changed but I'd think driving the woods would be a big driver in keeping deer off the property and making them nocturnal. Probably pretty tough to do anything about it when it's shared by a bunch of people though.
Bowsnbucks
5 year old buck +
Yep. Archery season = no crowds and deer move pretty well. No 4-wheelers either. Gun season ........ whole different story. Day after day of driving their 4-wheelers out to stands - when that's NOT done all year long - no deer seen. A small army motoring out into the woods isn't smart, IMO. Nocturnal is the result.
Reading the T & M thread.
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