My soybean tests for this year is complete and the results are pretty significant. I notill planted two different varieties of 3.6 and 3.9 maturity AG beans vs Derry forage soybeans vs Titan forage soybeans, for a total of four varieties, in identical conditions, with medium to heavy deer browsing. We had very good rainfall early on, no the past three weeks have been dry, but the beans tolerate dry spells much better than plants like yard grass, corn and clover.
So the results are; the ag beans are a 50% failure, which I think is mostly due to them struggling to recover from the constant browsing. The Derry forage soybeans have at least 50 to 60 percent more growth, and seem to recover well from the browsing. However, the Titan forage beans are growing side by side with the Derry beans, and the Titan Beans are outgrowing the Derry beans by a large margin. It's not noticeable in the pics, but it's very obvious by measuring, and also looks like a big difference from a distance, the Titan beans look healthier and much bushier. By random observation I did notice that the deer may have a small preference for the Derry beans, that is something that's rather difficult to analyze without collecting exact day to day data, and there's many other factors that play into that fact, such as, which side of the field the deer enter and what direction they want to head towards. But I do know that next year I will be planting all Titan beans, and perhaps doing a test putting them up against Eagle forage beans.
Top pic is Derry, bottom pic is Titan.
