Osage orange 🍊 hedge apple for wild life?

[Angus 1895]

What is the pros cons of this?

 

[Telemark]

Fox squirrels like them. They will shred them one by one to get at the seeds. Never seen anything else utilize them.

 

[Catscratch]

I've seen deer eat the apples very late in the winter when other food is gone. Also have watched a lot of button bucks eat them. No clue why that seems to be the case.

Their leafs are highly preferred in the fall. They vacuum them up right after they fall.

 

[Gravel Road]

Pro's-
-Deer will utilize leaves in the fall and fresh in spring.
-Good firewood
-Good fence row for small game
-Long lasting brush piles for small game and quail

Cons
-Invasive in certain circumstances
-Cows will eat and possibly choke on hedge balls
-Cows will pass hedge seeds through digestive system and continually add trees ( see invasive)
-Trees WILL make you bleed. Just try to cut them down and you will end up bloody now matter how many clothes and gloves you wear.
-HARD wood. green wood isn't too bad, but old wood is like iron. You will see sparks when chainsawing old wood

 

[Catscratch]

^^^ Hedge is about the only wood I use for the wood burner. If it doesn't spark when I drop the chain into it then it's not old enough. And yes, it tends make you bleed a little.

 

[SwampCat]

Make sure you have a good screen on fireplace, will look like a dozen sparklers

 

[Westwind]

I have been engaged in warfare with hedge trees since 1997 when we bought our place.

Remove them. But know what you are getting into. They are twisted up, often you cant tell what way they will fall if they are bigger trees and as you piece them out branch by branch they will hang up, bind your saw, tear you up with thorns and actively resist you. If you start on one in the spring and don’t finish it, when you come back the next spring it will have sprouted a shield active counter measures (thorns).

I took gobs of them out of my pasture/now food plot areas in the late 90’s. The stumps are still there and I work on them when I can. What is incredible to me is the stump/base of the tree material is impervious to rot. It is still there. If I pull it out of the ground its dry, hard as a rock.

Nothing burns like hedge. It’s the coal of firewood. In my area in the 70’s and early 80’s a lot of people had cast iron Franklin wood stoves. People were cutting up anything they could find back then. If they didn’t know what it was, some people would burn the knobs off their doors with hedge.

I have a really big one I want to take out and if I can get it out of there it opens up a lane I can walk and drive a tractor along a fence line. I might start on it this winter. I’m really not looking forward to it. It’s base is like a 100 year old oak tree.

 

[Catscratch]

What part of the country are you in Westwind?

 

[Westwind]

@Catscratch I could never convince my wife that we need an outdoor boiler. I cant tell you how many years of “free” heat I pushed in a pile and burned. It bothers me every time I do it.

 

[Westwind]

What part of the country are you in Westwind?

NW Illinois. We are basically Iowans, lol.

 

[T-Max]

My latest Redneck blind sits on the point of a hill. It gets blasted by wind. Due to the rocks, I couldn’t get an anchor in the ground so we cut off a hedge tree and I put eye blots in it. Solid as a rock and will probably be there after I’m gone.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[Catscratch]

@Catscratch I could never convince my wife that we need an outdoor boiler. I cant tell you how many years of “free” heat I pushed in a pile and burned. It bothers me every time I do it.

Ours is indoors like the one pictured. The wife loves it and keeps it fed as long as I provide the wood. I wanted and outdoor boiler but our insurance told us no, and promised our rates would go sky high if we did.

 

[Mortenson]

Squirrels like eating the apples in winter here. Deer will occasionally also. Probably more of a starvation food for them. When dad and grandad built fence, they'd always figure on 2 fence builds per 1 corner post. Like 50 years on the hedge posts and 100 on the hedge corner post.

 

[Westwind]

Ours is indoors like the one pictured. The wife loves it and keeps it fed as long as I provide the wood. I wanted and outdoor boiler but our insurance told us no, and promised our rates would go sky high if we did.
View attachment 63906

That is really nice. I didn’t know here were insurance issues with the outside boilers.

I might have to look back into getting a stove. Take another run at convincing the loving bride!

 

[Catscratch]

Good luck convincing her!
Our agent told us they've lost more houses to outdoor boilers than anything else. People get lazy and don't mow/weedeat around them, then an ember gets out on a windy day and pushes a fire to the house. He didn't blink an eye when I asked about an indoor one and said our rates wouldn't go up at all for one.

 

[Angus 1895]

I been told an outside burner needed 7 times the fuel an indoor one needs

 

[Gravel Road]

Good luck convincing her!
Our agent told us they've lost more houses to outdoor boilers than anything else. People get lazy and don't mow/weedeat around them, then an ember gets out on a windy day and pushes a fire to the house. He didn't blink an eye when I asked about an indoor one and said our rates wouldn't go up at all for one.

I had no idea! Seems a little crazy to me, but I could see a lot of bark buildup around the door that could lead to external fires. I'd love to have a wood stove but the wife would go crazy thinking bugs were getting in the house with the wood.

 

[Jerry]

I kill all of them I can. They tend to have several stems and thorns which make it difficult. They cast alot of shade. I am okay with a couple of them but kill most in the long run. They are not fun to deal with. I do not personally consider them to be much benefit to wildlife. But, I know many farms that are basically overgrown pastures that are full of them and the deer do use those properties.