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Got a favorite salt mix you use to keep the does in minerals? I like to put 1/2 half a drilled blue barrel in the ground and was curious as to mix ideas.

Am concerned about their welfare...

appreciate it...
tom


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Trophy Rock....end of story.


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I googled, ennded up wiht a bag of salt, bag of red mineral and bag of dicalcium phosphate or such and made my own mix.

I can't see the use of paying someone 3-4 times what its worth likely to make a mix to feed that covers the bases.

But if you ahve money and no time... the mixes are out there.


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yeah, definitely a mix--like 150# or so at a shot

have used the same mix but the di-phosphate seemed to slow things down instead of straight salt & mineral salt. Did you ever spiff it up with anything else?



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from what I read some and asked a couple of kids in college classes about it seems the deer should need the phosphate.

And like many things, they hit the minerals when they need it and the same with protein

I have put out salt and mineral and they'll eat more sometimes, but its not doing them as much benefit.

Kind of like corn, they will eat it almost any time, but its not so good, but they will refuse protein at times.

So I just roll with whats needed, not what they seem to eat the most of if that makes sense.

Certainly the salt is what they are craving, but they really don't need much of.


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If you're serious about it, find yourself an ungulate nutritionist that doesn't work for a feed company. Get a soil map for your county and sample all the soil types on your area and find out if any of them are mineral deficient. Once you know what minerals you need, sample vegetation winter, spring, summer and fall and have the samples analyzed by your nutritionist. Base your supplement plans, both mineral and nutritional, on the results of your forage samples.

Sometimes mineral deficiencies can be addressed in the mix of your nutritional supplements. Other times, that may not be the most efficient way to deal with them. Lots of soils where rost495 lives are phosphorous deficient. It may be more efficient to add phosphorous to the water that you supply for wildlife and livestock instead of formulating a salt mix or adding it to a supplemental feed. "Shotgunning" it usually turns out to be overly expensive or insufficient--rarely does it hit the mark.


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no mudhen, sorry man, I was BSing with that comment, just training does

although here my neighbors and I gave it a go back a ways with soil tested food plots (wet river bottom--poor soil)--we just didn't control enough property to reap the benefit of what we spent.

otoh, at deer camp it's big woods, low deer density...and they are pretty mobile


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I am a nutritionist, and have formulated minerals for deer and cattle for years. There is very little difference in their nutritional needs. I'd pick a standard salt free beef range mineral that is popular in your area, mix in 25% - 50% salt, and place it in some kind of feeder pan. Cheapest and very effective.
A cattle nutritionist will have already determined the trace minerals required because of the soil types in your area, which might include things like copper or selenium.
Use the 1:1 ratio of calcium to phosphorus if deer have access to legumes like alfalfa, 2:1 ratio of Ca:P if they don't eat legumes much but eat a lot of grain. Not complicated.

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appreciate it


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I put out the standard red Cattle block and some deer lick it, some eat the dirt where it "melts" into the soil during rain


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For several years, I used this recipe, recommended by my local state wildlife biologist:

http://fw.ky.gov/Wildlife/Documents/minerallicks.pdf

I would bury the material in a trench and cover it.

What I found is the deer would hit the lick, but not as hard as burying pure rock salt. It appeared they just did not like the "medicine" as much as the "candy." I finally relented and went back to straight rock salt. The licks are hammered from March until September.



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Yeah, did default to the same, but rather mixed fine mineral salt straight into the dirt.

It may have been my mix wasn't salty enough, though, after what I have been reading and also the mix referenced in the KY doc. IIRC, I used equal parts when including the meds. Also thought the additional minerals would be more of a draw, particularly with the poor soil in this area, but it had the opposite outcome.

I get them going with the salt/soil until they trench out enough soil to put a half-barrel down in the same spot. Saves on their dental bill...:)


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Burying is the key in my mind. Blocks and such give them too much. If they have to work at it, it does not make them as thirsty and therefore does not have them filling up with water right after. Just because the craving is there, does not mean it is a good idea to fill it. That craving is gone by hunting season anyway.

The only reason I use salt is to habituate the does into coming to the general area of my stands. All these ideas about promoting antler growth are highly over-hyped in my view. The ground around me is clay, but you dig down 6 inches and you start hitting limestone. There is all the calcium any deer is going to need.

Mixing Salt, rock salt, water softener pellets-- these all do about the same. Whatever you can get the cheapest is fine. I used to go out in March and replenish, but I am getting lazy. I'll probably do the deed over Memorial Day, just because the ground was so soggy. After a few years of dumping one bag a year in the same spot, you end up with enough residue that even skipping a year will not keep them from coming.

Effective? I did my original experiments with buried rock salt back in the 90's. I had a lick behind the neighborhood swim club, about 20 feet from the fence. I could bury a pound or two and come back 2 hours later and the deer would have been hitting on it, even though there were screaming kids just a few yards away.


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Grinning--they generally can't get from A to B without getting wet feet here...hardest part is digging a dry spot in a good place for the salt and keeping it from pooling.

Ditto on the does and soil. I don't watch salt licks per se. The deer naturally chew the soil to get salt (here) and have had a block sit ignored while buried fine salt in the ground gets hammered. Bears can be hard on blocks, too--sometimes taking it along...

I try to fill up the salt spots post season in case we can't get in early in the spring. This year the snow left a little earlier, but came last November hard enough that we couldn't get down the trails opening week of rifle. We get action on salt licks year round.


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They hammer the brown/red trace mineral blocks here. Have been using them for years in north Georgia and SC Piedmont. Don't know if it helps antler growth but I doubt it hurts and makes a good place to put out a camera and see what kind of headgear is growing this time of year.

I've got several places that are dug out pretty good after only a couple years of putting a block out every spring

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I'm a plumber and as such I deal with water softener quite a bit. Most of the ones we swap out have some salt left in them and I usually take it home and dunp it in a lick I started about 11 years ago.

It's just sodium chloride, but they seem to enjoy it, even liking the dirt in the lick.


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So I've had two of these licks going now for . . .(takes off a sock). . . 13 years. A few years ago, I was sitting up in the stand at Garbage Pit (it's actually a beautiful place) and I realized for the first time the immensity of the crater that has evolved over the past decade. These deer are coming in day after day and eating the dirt and carrying it away. The hole is getting pretty big. It's a slow afternoon hunt, and I get to thinking. I come from a bunch of home builders so first I estimate the cubic yards that had been removed, and then started calculating how much salt, deer/days, etc. it would take to excavate a basement.

The answer was highly impractical, but it kept me busy until sunset.


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This^^^. We generally just keep pouring rock salt on an old stump. Over time the rock salt will permeate the stump and roots. And the deer will eat the rotting wood and dig out the roots. We have one old lick that is about 4 feet deep and about 8 feet across.



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