Went down to our lease yesterday even though it was -15 with a windchill 0f -40 because it was the only day that worked for everyone. We were going to put out 1000 pounds of corn and 1000 pounds of soybeans but when we stopped at my buddies place to pick it up he wasn't around so we went into the shed to pick it up and the 40 bags were sitting all stacked up together so we loaded it up and left his cash. When we got to the lease to put out the feed we noticed it was all corn in the bags. He owed me from last year so he threw in extra corn. We ended up putting out about 1600 pounds of corn, 500 pounds of alfalfa, 100 pounds of sunflower seeds and 50 pounds of mineral. We spread it over 3 spots in case we have any bullies involved. In 3 or 4 weeks we will go back down and put out the soybeans.
Sounds awesome Tom! ive asked this before always with mixed answers. I don't live in Iowa or something with major corn crops. But if you take 100 acres with my 120 dead in the middle, there are probably close to 200 acres of it as corn. Just a bunch of scattered smaller corn fields, with 1 big 100 acre field close. And most don't get cut until late, like December. Do you think I should be ok putting corn out when its legal here?
No, the issues are when the deer are in starvation mode and then are given corn. I don't have a cornfield within 10 miles of me and I feed and the deer are healthy and happy.
Nice work, thats a lot of corn. Just topped off my feeder today. Wind chill was brutal but pulling a sled loaded with corn got the blood pumping.
I prefer to mix the beans and corn for a better balanced feed ration but sounds like you had enough other stuff to balance it out fairly well. Hope they do well, this cold makes critters burn calories fast. We were below zero windchill here last night and this morning and a high of 28F now. Brutal crap for our area. I filled all the feeders here two days ago with corn and beans and we have about 280 acres of wheat and another 100 of food plots. Our deer look good except for one buck, I don't know what his issue is but he's really poor looking and has been for a while, seem to have about one per year that way.
Yeah Covey I wasn't super happy we didn't have the beans to go with the corn but at that point there wasn't much we could do. I was glad we had some other stuff to go with it.
My feedmill does a mix of corn sunflower and soybeans with molasses, 12-15% protein and the deer love it I could put plain corn out and they would touch it.
I use a mix of corn, soybeans, and wet molasses. The deer run over each other to get it. I'd have to get the exact quantities of each but the it works for sure.
John you should have no problem putting out feed in that situation. Like the others have talked about make sure to put a mixture of stuff out. If you are not using a feeder and are putting it right on the ground then I would stay away from cracked corn.
I'm glad we don't have to worry about that down here. I'm in lower Alabama and Georgia. Our season runs until the first of February in Alabama, so we can't supplemental feed until mid February anyways. We don't have winters anywhere near the point of the deer needing that much help. When season does go out I load them up with minerals and keep them out until season starts again!