Soybeans as a Cool Season Forage
Filed under: Ask Grant, Food Plots
I planted the forage soybeans by Eagle Seed you talk about in your videos last summer where I hunt in south Alabama. The bean plants did extremely well – the best ever for me. Of course all the above average rainfall had to have helped as well. The deer seem to browse all summer and go to it well. I ended up disking under the plants with the beans still on the plants when it came time to plant my winter plots. This year I’m planning to leave the bean field as long as possible because I think I could hunt the bean field in bow season and into early gun season. I may even leave the beans in one area and not plant a winter plot at all to see what happens. What are your thoughts and recommendations on this strategy for both nutrition and hunting? Keith
Keith,
I’ve faced that same dilemma with Eagle Seed beans. Because they are bred to mature very late in the growing season, they are typically still producing browse (and beans) when it is time to plant fall/winter plots. I find it painful to mow great looking soybeans down that are providing quality forage and a ton or more of grain (the developing beans) only to go to the expense of planting a crop that may or may not eventually produce that much forage.
So, last year I did a test. I mowed down some Eagle Seed beans and planted a typical blend of wheat, clover, and brassicas. During the next several months I compared the productivity and deer’s preference of the Eagle beans I left standing to the wheat blend I planted. These plots were side by side. The standing beans provided WAY more green forage during the growing season and more pounds of quality food in the form of bean grain then the wheat/clover/brassica blend produced. I should note that it was a long cold winter at The Proving Grounds and the wheat blend wasn’t very productive until recently. There were about two weeks early this spring when the temperatures warmed enough to allow the wheat blend to grow rapidly and the deer certainly utilized that crop during that period.
The results were that the Eagle Seed beans produced many more tons of forage last fall, yielded more pounds of quality food in bean production, and were more desirable to the deer herd than the wheat blend.
Based on these observations, my program this year will include leaving standing any Eagle Seed beans that produced well through the summer. If there are any areas where the Eagle Seed beans were browsed so much that there is not much forage or bean pods left by August, I’ll simply drill a wheat/clover blend into that crop. In other words, I’ll judge each plot by the quantity and quality of forage available when it’s time to establish plots this fall. I don’t want to make the mistake of mowing super high quality forage and remove developing bean pods that will produce more pounds of food that deer prefer than the crop I’ll have to spend resources on to establish.
Growing Deer together,
Grant
