Food plots

who here does food plots for game. what for drill seeder do you use? I'm looking to get into it. I have a trackloader for any clearing that might be necessary as well as several small ag tractors with three point. looking at using a rototiller for tillage, then follow it with a small drill or a packer seeder. Whats your thoughts...

What iv done for mine is use our tractor with the 3pt plow, then use a set of disc to smooth it all out. Then i just broadcast the seed out and use a lawn roller hooked up to my quad and go over it 1 time and pray for rain.

Now next yr i want to start planting some corn and need to find a drill or something for that.

Turned out good.

Looks good nate. I'm looking to do it as a business in Potter co., as well as manage the plots on my father's farm. I think i'm going to get too much into transporting a tractor, disk, drill, and roller/cullipacker which is what makes me think that a rototiller and a packer seeder is the way to go. Looking at Kasco, suckup, landpride, and great plains also make a small drills w/ grass boxes. I have access to several older 4 row corn planters to handle that as well.

Ax the Roto Tiller

You need to Ax the roto tiller, they work the ground up to much and are terrible in rocks. It's hard to beat a disc and a drag. Not a lot of money tied up and works really good. As far as no till goes we have a Tye Pasture Pleaser and it works pretty good. It takes a big tractor to pull a small no till drill though, not to mention the cost. What kind of ground are you dealing with? Sandy, Rocky, Hard ETC.

Most of the work will be in old farm ground, with some being in freshly cleared ground. No till will not be an immediate option as the ground isnt ready to to till just yet. Maybe after the second year the ground will be able to be no tilled. Alsot of the ground is rocky. We dont really have a clay soil that will bake into a hard pan.

The big tractor we have right now is a IH 966 so I should be good there.

Rocks and No Till Don't Get Along

We have a No Till Drill and I can't imagine buying or using one for food plot work. If it was me I would buy a Three point disc 6 to 8 feet wide "USED", a Three point Seeder and a NEW drag harrow 8 to 12 feet wide. By going with 3 point equipment you can load in on a 16 foot trailer. You can get in the business for between $3,000.00 and $4,000.00 this way. Or you can spend 3 to 4 times that much for a No Till Drill and spend about $3,000.00 a year on maintance. You don't need to think about farming in this food plot work, you need Very Little dirt. The KEY is "Contact Points" getting the seed to Touch the ground. On ground that has just been cleared sowing it on top of the ground and running a harrow is good enough. I have done A LOT of these things using a horse drawn disc pulled behind a 4X4 Truck, Sowing them by hand and Dragging over them with a Cedar Tree I cut down on site.

I'm suprised no one has mentioned adding a lime/fertilizer spreader to your list of needed implements. Soil quality is directly related to antler growth in deer, good genetics of couse are important but planting in poor soil is'nt the best use of your time, fuel, seed. Soil testing is not expensive, fertilizer can be, but a food plot with healthy plants will endure drought better and attract more critters and thats what you want ,right?

As far as lime, this year i got about 6 ton and just tried to tail gate spread it but it didnt work that great but it was good enough. Then i just plowed it under and disc it around which mixed it up good enough for me.

Gary in da UP said:

I'm suprised no one has mentioned adding a lime/fertilizer spreader to your list of needed implements. Soil quality is directly related to antler growth in deer, good genetics of couse are important but planting in poor soil is'nt the best use of your time, fuel, seed. Soil testing is not expensive, fertilizer can be, but a food plot with healthy plants will endure drought better and attract more critters and thats what you want ,right?

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what he said, soil testing is very important, and the second most important is weed control, and finding a selective herbicide that wont kill your crop. We no-till everthing on our farm, but I would say stay away from that unless you do your home work on it. What seed will you plant, what state, what soil. I need this information to be able to give detailed advice.

nateV- if you want to grow corn you will need to do some research on it. Its not a low maintance crop to grow, and it is not cheap either. It takes a planter to plant too, not a drill. Corn needs alot of N,P, and K to do good, so dont skimp on fert. I would shy away from planting it, and say buy a small drill and plant soybeans or clover, chicory, etc. The planting conditions will be key in your sucess, dont plant to early into a cold wet soil, wait till it warms up and drys out.

What Deere9670 sez about herbicides and no til are right on the money, plus you need an applicators certifacation to buy and apply the good stuff.

Gary in da UP said:

I'm suprised no one has mentioned adding a lime/fertilizer spreader to your list of needed implements. Soil quality is directly related to antler growth in deer, good genetics of couse are important but planting in poor soil is'nt the best use of your time, fuel, seed. Soil testing is not expensive, fertilizer can be, but a food plot with healthy plants will endure drought better and attract more critters and thats what you want ,right?

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I agree on the lime and fertilizer but we are talking about making money too. No more than you put out you can't charge enough. At $6.00 a ton if you spread 6 tons that's $36.00, the going rate where I live for Lime Spreading. Say you double it your talking $72.00 how much equipment can you buy for $72.00 Gross? The best way to do these small jobs is get your fertilize on the weekend and use their buggy to spread lime, you will have to make about 3 trips over the field to get enough on.

The problem with food plots is the size 1/4 to 3 acres where I live. you spend more time turning than going straight. Your going to tear up more than you will make draging a No-Till Drill around in a small circle over rough ground. Your better off spraying it, waiting 2 weeks, going back and discing around the edges, burning it, sowing it on top of the ground and running a harrow over it once or twice, getting paid and going to the house.

I will get some pictures on my web site of some food plots that were hand sown behind the dozer. No discing or harrowing just seed on top of the bare ground. It will be the end of next week before I can get the pictures up.

Here's a picture of a really nice food plot in Randolph County Arkansas. Most food plots are a 1/3 or a 1/4 of the size of this one. http://www.rodneyobrien.com/foodplots.htm

From what i have read, turnips and clover are the way to go for whitetails. This is what I will be using for a foodplot next year.

Down at the Turnip Patch

Turbo21835 said:

From what i have read, turnips and clover are the way to go for whitetails. This is what I will be using for a foodplot next year.

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One of the food plots they sowed behind the dozer was Turnips, I'll get a picture up next week. Down here it's mostly winter wheat, turnips and clover. There are a few people that plant soybeans and peas

roddyo said:

The problem with food plots is the size 1/4 to 3 acres where I live. you spend more time turning than going straight. Your going to tear up more than you will make draging a No-Till Drill around in a small circle over rough ground. Your better off spraying it, waiting 2 weeks, going back and discing around the edges, burning it, sowing it on top of the ground and running a harrow over it once or twice, getting paid and going to the house.

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I have to disagree with the burning, and the dozing. If you burn your ground, you will burn off lime if you have applied it already, as well as other nutrients that may be present. You will also burn off organic matter, which is crucial for the soil.
As for running a dozer over your food plot, I have to say thats a no-no as well. Compaction is a farmers worst enemy.

Turbo21835 said:

From what i have read, turnips and clover are the way to go for whitetails. This is what I will be using for a foodplot next year.

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Never attempted turnups, but I planted a clover mix last spring and I was amazed at how easy of a crop it was to maintain, and how well it did in less then ideal conditions. Deer dident eat it like I thought they would thoughointhead I think I will spray it in the spring with some 2-4-d or roundup and then plant some soybeans, because the deer love them.

I hunt along side a 25 acre bean field, I dont really need the plot for attracting animals. Rather I want the nutrition for bullwinkle

There were some turnips mixed in this wildlife seed blend i planted last yr but my deer never touched them. I had some that were the size of a cantalope, they were pretty big.


And about the corn i just planed on liming the feild and thats it. My neigbor has an old corn planter im gonna check out to see if its still good or not. If not i guess i can just get a broom stick and make holes lol..

but what about in the old days, i dont think the old timers worried about lime..didnt they just plow and plant?? Thats pretty much what i was gonna do.

If you want to bring the deer in, plant edible beans. Thats green beans to most people. Deer are on them like white on rice.

Thanks to those that mentions soil testing, I'm implementing that but didn't mention it. For me a soil test costs $8, and that $$ tells me right away if its even worth plantin in. See my background is that of a crop farmer, not an excavator.

Nice thing with turnips is that they are edible in january when nothing else is.

Oh, and first pass thru new ground will be done w/ my deere 450c trackloader, and just tickling the ground with the teeth. Thats alot easier of a machine to find an old machine, big rock, tree stump or something with than it is to ruin a tire on one of my other tractors.

Burning Rocks and Other Things

Deere9670 said:

I have to disagree with the burning, and the dozing. If you burn your ground, you will burn off lime if you have applied it already, as well as other nutrients that may be present. You will also burn off organic matter, which is crucial for the soil.
As for running a dozer over your food plot, I have to say thats a no-no as well. Compaction is a farmers worst enemy.

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I don't mean to be rude but in the type of work that I Do
I have to disagree with almost everything you said. After going to my web site and looking at this picture http://rodneyobrien.com/foodplots.htm Stumpjumper asked me some food plot questions on another thread. I have just been telling him what works in my area.

Lime is a rock, when a fire goes over it it is still there. We don't do it very often but when we need to lime before wheat beans we lime, burn and plant. If you want to dig through the ashes the lime's still there. The only way to lose lime other than using it up is through leaching and erosion.

Yes if you burn you will lose almost all of the organic matter and the N. The P and K Stays. I know that every 1% of organic matter is worth 20 units of N per acre. In this area you can buy 2 tons of chicken litter that will gain you more organic matter than 10 years of "Good" farming practices. Plus you get a list of trace minerals as long as your arm for free. The reason I'm for burning and sowing on top of the ground and covering with a good drag is it eliminates 2 mistakes most people make here.

1)They work their ground to much and get their seed to deep.

2)They work their ground to much and it comes a big rain and they lose their topsoil. It would take 500 years of organic matter here to make an inch of top soil.

I know this is ideal for No-Till but dragging a Drill down a four wheeler trail to pull it around in a circle in a half a dozen fields to cover 6 acres isn't ideal on the pocket book.

As far as the dozer in a food plot goes it's in there clearing the food plot out. "Compaction is a farmers worst enemy" The ground pressure of my dozer is about 5 PSI. To run a tractor in that food plot it would need to weigh under 2880 lbs. if it had 4 12X12 contact patches. By the way what has more ground pressure a 8400 MFWD or a 8400T?