I was thinking about how much winter food we have, and wondering if it is enough. I did some rough measuring on google earth and figure we have about 292 acres of good deer habitat (I cut the area of a big grassland in half to adjust for lower deer holding habitat) on our land and the immediate neighbors 30 acre piece and a standing poplar tree woods (the poplar farming stuff). I added there's too because I know for a fact that they don't plant food plots. Going off a post by someone else on here, I figure 3 deer per 20 acres on average, which gives me about 44 deer that need food all winter long. If each deer eats on average 2.5 pounds a day, and .5 pounds come from foraging, that's 88 lbs per day, or about 6.5 tons for the five month winter (Mid-November through Mid-April). Do these figures seem accurate to you guys? It was a lot of "Close-enough" measurements... The next problem I have is that we are currently only planting about .29 acres of brassica/turnips, .22 acres of broadcasted corn, .046 acres of broadcasted beans, and .11 acres of clover. Using 3 tons/acre for brassica/turnips, 2.1 for corn, 1 for beans, and 3 for clover, I get a total of about 1.74 tons of winter food. Do these figures seem close? If all the figures seem close, what would you guys suggest planting to try to get closer to the 6.5 tons of needed winter food?
The calcs seem good. How did you're plots look this past winter? Did you have food left over or was it ate clean? That could be one possible indicator, if you need more or not.
They were pretty bare, most of what was left was trampled. I don't know what to plant for filler though Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I would consider planting more brassicas. That could easily give more tons/acre. Or are you wanting to give more variety?
A half acre bean field will be hard to get much from. The deer will browse it down before it gets a chance to mature.
^^ What he said. But if you want to plant a half acre of beans then I would suggest fencing the beans off until they're mature enough to take grazing. The only fencing method i've use that has done well is fishing line at 3 different heights. Varing from 1.5' then the next at 3' and the next at 4' or so. I have a plot of clover and brassicas that doesn't have one single deer track in it yet. Electric fence is a good method but more expensive and the deer just knock ours down or jump over it.
