Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Deer Hunting Yearling cattle and food plotting

So I was wondering if any of you guys that raise yearlings could help me out. I have been hunting this farm for a long time. Place used to be planted in 25 acres of corn for years for a dairy op that had the ag easement . That operation went under and the field went south and stayed that way for 2 decades. In the last decade I have been over seeding clover and timothy into it and have a pretty good stand. Four years ago the owner let a local guy graze about 10 yearling on there from May to about end of September. Cool guy, he runs a small kosher specialty operation on his farm, chickens and dairy and raises the beef over by where I hunt. I think it’s great, a win win for all. I am looking at over seeding some cereal rye into the field at about 50lb per acre so it’s not to overwhelming. I don’t want to impact the cattle operation and I’m not sure if this would cause bloat like oats might. I know the have no bloat oats. In your opinion would this be beneficial to the farmer as well? He’s less up to speed on crops than I am and would turn these out on anything green. He was unaware of the benefits of clover and I planted some for him for his dairy cows and his production went up so that was a good thing. I’ve planted rye before but never had anything but deer grazing on it. Any thoughts?

I had to abandon one 2 acre food plot because of neighboring cattle breaking thru the fence didn’t seem to affect them

Cereal rye is a great cool season forage option for cattle. It won't hurt them at all. I drill a mix of cereal rye, crimson clover, turnips, and radishes on 30-40 acres every year. It makes excellent fall and early spring grazing, dry hay, and baleage. The deer love it and will graze it throughout the winter.

And if any of the cereal rye matures, fowl of some sort should show up.

Thank you very much. Do you think that with the beef arriving around May/June it would be good timing that I wouldn’t have to clip it off. I’m thinking by the time they get there they should be able to mow it down fairly quick.

The rye here in southern Missouri is normally mature and finished by May/June, so the forage quality for the cattle would be greatly diminished by then. If you're in New York like your profile shows, you're growing season will be quite a bit behind us here, so I would think that your rye would likely still be mostly vegetative at that point and not going reproductive yet. If so, it would be the perfect time to put the calves on it.

That’s what I was thinking. Thanks JPL

If the rye bolts and/or heads out before the cattle get there it could cause them some problems. Could being the operative word. Depending on the condition of the pasture and the other species in it, as a SWAG I'd guess that it could use more or more variety of legumes/clover. Without knowing, that's generally a safe suggestion when talking the overseeding of a pasture IME.

Talk the the producer and see if he'd have a problem with the cereal rye. If not, then it go forward.

In this area 50# per acre would much higher than normal.

I was planning on speaking with him before doing anything.

The whole point of this was to provide winter/ early spring forage. The deer and calves are on the clover and Timothy all summer and keep it mowed down. By the time fall comes around there is still some small clover there (like seedling size). I was thinking the rye might give the calves something to munch on while giving the clover a chance to regroup.Our springs up here have been trending later and later every year. I couldn’t get my tomatoes in the ground until the week before Memorial Day this year and I probably could have waited till after the holiday. That’s about 4 weeks late. Snow didn’t melt out totally till April on this field. I feel pretty confident that the rye won’t bolt before the calves get in there.

As to the 50lbs per acre , I’m feeling that I’m going to have a low germination rate because I don’t have a drill and need to broadcast this into the existing stuff not bare ground. I expect the birds will be hitting it hard going in.

I’d talk to the farmer directly.

If you can get the rye cheap enough, I'd not be afraid to go higher than 50# if broadcasting it into standing green and not killing it. Your germination rate will likely be very low.

Heck, might be cool to nuke a couple of small patches/strips after you seed it and see it really take off.

I wouldn't be afraid to bump the pounds of rye seed per acre up either. I typically drill around 100 pounds per acre for a full stand. You might check with your local county NRCS/Soil and Water District office to see if they have any rental no till drills that you could use.

Rye is fine, given the choice cattle will go to the wheat before the rye