Forage soybeans

[Razorback]

I haven't noticed a lot of usage of the pods on our place but we have a lot of wheat, durana clover, and tillage radish. It also depends on your deer numbers but if you have a pretty good stand of beans, 30 bushels/ac is over 1500 lbs of beans. The eagle pods shatter more easily than ag beans. You can mix ag beans and the forage beans 50-50 to get more shatter resistance if winter pod usage is a big concern. Seems like more of a factor for those in the Midwest or north of us here in Arkansas.

 

[Razorback]

Another crop you may want to try is sorghum/milo. I planted it in several plots, big and small. The deer don't bother with it until it's ripe, which is during the fall. I'm having a problem gauging usage. One farm I just planted some strips, as an attempt at screening. I also planted some in part of a mix in a large area. The deer ate every stitch of grain in the screens and scattered through the mix on that farm. On another farm I planted a long strip for screening, plus two sorghum/milo/millet plots of about an acre. When I left the farm they were just nibbling on it, but not devouring it like the other farm. The only difference I can see is that the second farm had standing corn on it and 600 acres standing corn around it until last week. I'm hoping they just liked the corn better, but are hitting the plots now. I'm 6 hours away, so not sure.

I think you may be too far north, but the one plot that didn't get much deer use didn't happen to be infested with sugar cane aphids, did it? I didn't grow any milo this year because the aphids pretty much wiped us out the year before.

 

[Don M]

I use a 5 wire electric fence that I simply take the wires out of the insulators and lay the on the ground when I am ready to let the deer in.

I have tries Milorgonite , Deer Away, etc with limited success. The fence works the best.

 

[Brokenbear]

I agree with others who said you probably need more than 3 ac. The non-RR forage beans aren't too difficult to maintain. I use the non RR ones from eagle seeds. Just spray metolachlor (dual or generic) before or at planting and then Raptor (beyond and clearcast are other names of same product) a few weeks after germination. The non RR eagle beans were about $40/bag this year. Eagle has them in several maturity groups. Raptor seems very expensive at first glance but only 5 oz/ac is used. One gallon treats 25 ac. The per acre cost is not bad. Cheaper than the cost of buying the RR eagles. We have RR resistant pigweed and marestail so we have to spray raptor/beyond anyway.

I agree that non-RR forage beans can be managed but my problem was the size chemical containers of the specific chemicals the seed manufacturer recommended were in some cases years and years of quantity ...but i will chase down the chems you suggested and see about cost/availability/container size ....As I said earlier the RR Eagles were only $25 above the non RR and one pass Gly is my friend
Thanks
Bear

 

[jlane35]

I use a 5 wire electric fence that I simply take the wires out of the insulators and lay the on the ground when I am ready to let the deer in.

I have tries Milorgonite , Deer Away, etc with limited success. The fence works the best.

I don't know anything about electic fences. Does 5 wire mean 5 different wires running around the plot at different heights?

 

[swat1018]

I think you may be too far north, but the one plot that didn't get much deer use didn't happen to be infested with sugar cane aphids, did it? I didn't grow any milo this year because the aphids pretty much wiped us out the year before.

No, now that the corn is gone they seem to be hitting it hard, by pics I'm getting.

 

[Don M]

By 5 wire I mean that I run 5 wires on each post evenly spaced.. The top one is about 6 ft off the ground. The bottom wire is grounded and the rest are hot.
None of these wire are staggered or off set. Keeps out 95% of my deer... But this system is easy to put up and take down when needed.