Horse manure......

DocHolladay

Well-Known Member
"Dr. Deer" has put out some good info, but sometimes I think he has his head so far up his butt, he can't see the sunshine through the turds.

Listen to what he says here....

Listen to what he says here at the 6:15 mark...
 
He's got some good points. He's also pushing to sell his product, BFO, at outrageous prices. My regular oats were green all last winter and being grazed heavily here in Pa. He mentions his brassica plots only being utilized seven days of the year. I guess he never saw deer rooting for turnips in midwinter? Brassica killing deer? In forty years of hunting I never saw one deer dead from eating brassica or corn. Also, he says right-of-ways are an unused resource? Overgrown power lines chock full of native browse make the best deer bedding, feeding, and hunting areas I have ever seen. He advocates oats, clover and chicory, but not much else. What about AWP, corn, soybeans, alfalfa, sunflowers, beets, cowpeas, all of which are equal or better than his"special" oats? The answer is that no single plant species makes a perfect year round deer food. The more variation a plotter can offer, the greater will be their success in holding and keeping their deer herd healthy. Well worth watching, thanks for posting.
P.S. I wonder what LC would have said about these "poisonous brassicas"?
 
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Im no expert, but I still wonder if BFO isnt some sort of hybrid of black oats. They are more winter tolerant than normal oats, plus they get taller and more biomass than normal oats. https://www.greencoverseed.com/product/1059/

One day of snow wont make crap of a visual difference! That doesnt prove cold hardiness to me!

If what he says is true about BFO than wed all use them if they didnt cost so damn much, Ya you might lose 40% of your yield by using wheat, but if its 1/3 of the price, who cares? A guy can plant twice as much and still be cheaper!
 
He's got some good points. He's also pushing to sell his product, BFO, at outrageous prices. My regular oats were green all last winter and being grazed heavily here in Pa. He mentions his brassica plots only being utilized seven days of the year. I guess he never saw deer rooting for turnips in midwinter? Brassica killing deer? In forty years of hunting I never saw one deer dead from eating brassica or corn. Also, he says right-of-ways are an unused resource? Overgrown power lines chock full of native browse make the best deer bedding, feeding, and hunting areas I have ever seen. He advocates oats, clover and chicory, but not much else. What about AWP, corn, soybeans, alfalfa, sunflowers, beets, cowpeas, all of which are equal or better than his"special" oats? The answer is that no single plant species makes a perfect year round deer food. The more variation a plotter can offer, the greater will be their success in holding and keeping their deer herd healthy. Well worth watching, thanks for posting.
P.S. I wonder what LC would have said about these "poisonous brassicas"?
I watched the whole series and there is some good info to be gleaned from it. Some of it pushes the products he is dabbling in, but still good info.
 
Take into consideration the part of the country he lives in, which is where I live, when he speaks of brassicas. I've grown them twice, beautiful stands, but the deer didn't touch them. A whole acre of the biggest bushiest plants, and no takers. I've even sprinkled turnips into my wheat. Nothing ! It's my opinion that it doesn't get cold enough here. I'm not defending him because he's from here, because I plant wheat too. I've planted BFO before, and the deer didn't like them any better than wheat. I've also tried WINA Oats Plus, no better than wheat IMO.

I agree he's pushing his product, but don't they all ?
 
Drycreek you have a point, it depends on the deer. The experts and most food plotters will say that deer will knock over corn to get to soybeans, but in my plot I can show you where they are eating the corn and leaving the beans 3ft away alone.
Now it could be the variety of bean, these just don't taste good for whatever reason. This is my first serious food plot and it was leftover dicamba tolerant beans. I've got my plan formulating for next year already

He's gonna push something that makes him some money, he's getting paid some out of every BFO bag sold. That's why sites like this are so great. I was all ready to spend $$$ on WI and other BOB seed and I started reading on here, and it's like a lightbulb went off over my head.

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I have yet to find a success story with brassicas in any part of texas( not just east texas)

I easily grow PTT that look great. The problem is they only taste great to me. Wildlife leave them be

Oats are a staple here. Bob oats trump BOB oats in every way

bill
 
I have yet to find a success story with brassicas in any part of texas( not just east texas)

I easily grow PTT that look great. The problem is they only taste great to me. Wildlife leave them be

Oats are a staple here. Bob oats trump BOB oats in every way

bill

My experiences exactly ! I pulled some of the turnips up and piled them up last year and the hogs wouldn't even eat them. If hogs won't eat it.....well.......


I still plant a couple products from WINA, their clover, and their clover-chicory mix. Too expensive ? Probably, but the convenience factor outweighs the cost, which is minuscule in the total amount of dollars I have invested in this deer hunting-food plotting thing. It's all about perspective ! Is your venison gonna cost $75 a lb. or $76 ?o_O
 
Being as I live in an extremely non-agriculture area I went to our COOP and ordered "oat" seed. A couple weeks later it came in and it was BFO. I didn't specify what kind and my COOP just gets what it can. I am going to plant it in my fall mix with WR, Barduro Red Clover, Daikon Radish, and PTT.

I have planted PTT for a few years and do see usage in the cold months at end of season but Radishes seem to get hit from the git go. So much so that luckily I have a very low deer population and some actually reach maturity. When it gets cold they disappear overnight...

I opened up a bunch more ground to plant them last spring so I am hoping to have food left when greenup begins. I am excited to see what BFO does because where I live the deer rarely if ever touch the WR and I just use it as a cover crop and soil builder and fawning cover...
 
Deer love the radishes. They hammered them when I tried them here.

I wonder if BRIX has any effect on deer usage of brassicas?
Same here. I've never seen deer jump on a new crop faster than radishes. Turnips... not so much. Very minimal grazing of tops and essentially nothing on tubers. I'm ok with that though as I tend to plant such for the worms as much as anything else.

I'm going to doubt , at least on my soils, my brassicas have a high Brix score. ,,,,but I'll check this fall.
 
The deer have never touched turnips on my plots here in S.E. Louisiana. They just rot in the ground in late Spring.
 
Being as I live in an extremely non-agriculture area I went to our COOP and ordered "oat" seed. A couple weeks later it came in and it was BFO. I didn't specify what kind and my COOP just gets what it can. I am going to plant it in my fall mix with WR, Barduro Red Clover, Daikon Radish, and PTT.

I have planted PTT for a few years and do see usage in the cold months at end of season but Radishes seem to get hit from the git go. So much so that luckily I have a very low deer population and some actually reach maturity. When it gets cold they disappear overnight...

I opened up a bunch more ground to plant them last spring so I am hoping to have food left when greenup begins. I am excited to see what BFO does because where I live the deer rarely if ever touch the WR and I just use it as a cover crop and soil builder and fawning cover...
Let us know what you think the BFO.
 
My deer love any radish or turnip from leaves to tubors after first 2 freezes. And oats they destroy by Nov. Keep in mind the best reason to plant radish or turnips is the soil busting and building qualities. Smells like a landfill in the spring.
 
My deer love any radish or turnip from leaves to tubors after first 2 freezes. And oats they destroy by Nov. Keep in mind the best reason to plant radish or turnips is the soil busting and building qualities. Smells like a landfill in the spring.
Second best reason is the deer absolutely love them. I've planted the LC mix for years and every year I watch the deer pick out the radish over the other ingredients.
 
I have used BFO for a very long time. It is too expensive but I continue to use it though sparingly as for us it has worked well. Cold Hardy is not a defined measurement though it is used as such. The BFO is cold hardy enough that it lives and thrives well during our hunting season which runs through the second week of December. BFO has never overwintered here though it significantly outlasts other oats here. A weed that has come with it(Cheat Weed) is at full strength by early summer. By killing the cheat weed by July 1 we have managed to keep it under control enough that it is only a small nuisance so far.

Brassica attraction here occurs daily from November until spring. I don't doubt Dr.Kroll's finding that it is only used for nine days a year FOR HIS AREA. As it being somewhat of a poison eaten uncooked,I have no clue YET. I can say though that deer here seem to come out of winter better since we started using brassica than before(excluding the year where the temps were steadily below zero for most of the winter and the five ft.deep snow became hard packed early in the winter and stayed that way for over two months). After normal winters, deer look healthy and dead deer are seldom found on the property. And because we shed hunt we scour about every inch of the property at the right time of year to also see winter kill evidence if it is there. Generally clover use here slows around October 14;clover is seldom eaten HERE after that until mid spring. They take a few bites of it as they head for the grains or brassicas.

Winter deer use in the plots here is grains and brassicas. I can't say if that includes oats or not as the oats are normally mixed in with the rye/triticale in our plantings. We know the oats dye off sometime during the winter but do not know when in the winter the oats die off. The rye and triticale mixed (grain wise) feeds them non-stop from winter into spring until the clovers takeover. Last winter we ran out of brassica during the winter and the rye and triticale kept them well fed.

Radishes definitely have excellent attraction appeal but it is the PTT that produces the huge amount of bulk that they are still eating as late as March.

It is important to note that most years we have a deer population higher than most people see and an influx of deer from surrounding properties spend their winters on this property;The higher deer population coupled with temps down to minus twenty-five or worse does not compare to many other areas of the country. We also are not allowed to use feeders or put out feed piles even in the winter as some areas can do.
 
I will, as far as I know the deer have never had an agricultural oat up this way. I have heard they really like them in other areas but we will see...
Okie...Look forward to following your experience with BFOs. Like Chainsaw, they are part of our planting every fall. Deer just seem to love the BFOs and they produce well throughout our relatively mild winter. Don't plant them in every plot but always in 1 or 2 plots. Same for radishes. Deer prefer them over turnips. By the end of december the radishes will be nipped down to the tuber.
 
Second best reason is the deer absolutely love them. I've planted the LC mix for years and every year I watch the deer pick out the radish over the other ingredients.
After rethinking, I think this is the number reason to plant them. Good point.
 
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