Winter rye usage

jlane35

Well-Known Member
So we got our first big snowfall of the year last week. The deer aren’t utilizing the winter rye and digging like I thought they would. What is everyone else’s experience with winter/snow usage?
 
I've had this discussion a time or two... or ten. I see little use at all. Wheat on the other hand is used a ton. Guys up north (far enough that they can't grow wheat) say winter rye gets hammered. My belief is that if you can grow both, wheat will be preferred. Wheat has the same soil building attributes as rye but does lack the chemical weed suppression of rye. The claim that wheat needs fertilizer while rye doesn't stems from wheat farmers needing to make grain. Wheat grows just fine and stays green all winter (in the right zones) without nitrogen inputs. If I could post pics I would show you some awnless wheat that I grow. It works well in my system and gets hammered.
 
I've had this discussion a time or two... or ten. I see little use at all. Wheat on the other hand is used a ton. Guys up north (far enough that they can't grow wheat) say winter rye gets hammered. My belief is that if you can grow both, wheat will be preferred. Wheat has the same soil building attributes as rye but does lack the chemical weed suppression of rye. The claim that wheat needs fertilizer while rye doesn't stems from wheat farmers needing to make grain. Wheat grows just fine and stays green all winter (in the right zones) without nitrogen inputs. If I could post pics I would show you some awnless wheat that I grow. It works well in my system and gets hammered.

I have some awnless wheat mixed in as well. I’m just not seeing the use I was expecting on my trail cameras. Don’t get me wrong, before rifle season and snow they were in the fields non stop. Maybe the deer left during rifle season and haven’t come back yet. Bc my two cameras are showing very little activity.
 
My deer won’t dig for rye, triticale or clover when the snow is more than 10” or so. We got 30” last week and deer are digging for brassicas, in the corn and using browse.
 
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My deer won’t dig for rye, triticale or clover when the snow is more than 10” or so. We got 30” last week and deer are digging for brassicas, in the corn and using browse.

That will do it then. We got 14 inches. It’s starting to work it’s way down and as we speak my camera is going off with a doe in the field. 85745CE0-24FD-40F5-BE35-7724686E0388.jpeg
 
Just my opinion but here is the same doe, and probably only one using the plot, the first evening after the storm. 1EDAC010-8B62-40A0-82E2-69510AF7638E.jpeg

I know North of us got 40 inches so this is minor in comparison but it still has to be tough on the deer.
 
Snow like that is a game changer. Disregard my previous comment!

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So we got our first big snowfall of the year last week. The deer aren’t utilizing the winter rye and digging like I thought they would. What is everyone else’s experience with winter/snow usage?
I've planted rye in new ground i've broken, and it's gotten good attention up to a certain point, and then the deer are just done with it sometime in late November it seems.
 
I've planted rye in new ground i've broken, and it's gotten good attention up to a certain point, and then the deer are just done with it sometime in late November it seems.

Before the snow piled up, deer here do the buffet thing hitting clover, rye brassicas and corn. I like the buffet because it promotes movement. Once snows pile up, their choices narrow down to corn, brassicas and natural browse.
 
i've been planting rye here for years and years....but honestly never had great December luck on it. My own observation is we are heavy oak trees by me, so if lack of snow years they prefer the acorns over rye and then in snowy years i hardly see anything on property unless i got standing beans/corn. Possible the food sources around you may be making the rye the "2nd best" option and not the destination.
 
Rye covers all my many food plotting sins..........the mother sauce of every mix/combination of seed

bill
You're a man after my own heart. I've never heard it put that way, but that's about exactly what rye is for me; a little bit of rye covereth a host of food plot sins. And don't forget the oats, they are also a "mother sauce" species. What Rye is to fall food plots, oats are to spring plots. When I'm baffled with what to put in a fall field I always go to rye, and when I'm not sure what to plant in the spring, I always go to oats. Allen
 
I’m in Missouri so we don’t have any deep snow. All the rye I plant will look like bare dirt by spring. When you walk out into the plot it will look like hogs have been in it. The last several years I’ve been planting a mix to try to get the deer to use them earlier and try to compete with acorns. My mix has been Austrian winter peas, Bob oats, wheat and rye. My review is it’s hard to compete with acorns when they first start falling after awhile the deer start using the plots. If your deer don’t like rye I would try a mix or something different.
 
I planted rye a second time on a water hole fill plot I made in 2019. It switched on (clover) pretty good by mid summer that I could mow it and throw down rye. I wanted one more crack at it to try to push roots down through the fill to the original topsoil. Kinda excited to see how much comes up in spring.
 
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