POLL QUESTION: Wheat or Cereal Rye

Which one of the following choices do you use as the base cereal grain in your food plot mixes???

1) Wheat
2) Cereal Rye
3) Both
4) Other

Again, feel free to comment on your individual situation.

I normally do both, mainly because I can get feed wheat cheaper than rye.

4

A three way mix of Wheat, Cereal Rye and Forage Oats. I also have crimson and arrow leaf clover.

4 ..... Triticale and oats are my weapon of choice.

4) I usually plant all three, wheat,oats, and rye. Never planted Triticale, but 2dogs has got me curious. Anybody know if Triticale helps build soil, like rye? What are its advantages?

Deer really like Rye here. We plant it in our pastures in the fall. They will often feed in the pastures instead of my food plots. I usually plant a 3 way cereal grain mix of wheat, rye and oats with AW peas, rape and kale thrown in. I will also plant Diakon radishes this year. The deer love them.

I have planted Triticale too and deer do like it but it seems no stores around here ever carry it.

Also for those of you who might go ask for Triticale, it's pronouned Trit uh kale EE, not Trit uh Kale. I found that out when I ordered some.....

1 and oats. Will probably try rye after all this talk.

I use seed wheat or feed wheat. On the rye, I thought deer didn't mess with it much??? Is there different types of rye??,

There is Rye which is a cereal grain and there is Ryegrass an annual grass. Regardless of what you might read, deer will eat both, at least as long as they are well fertilized, but they definitely prefer Rye over Ryegrass. They prefer wheat and oats to ryegrass as well. Ryegrass is a profuse seed maker and in one year will make enough seed to keep it going for several years.

You will see people post on here and some will tell you that deer don't eat GRASS and that's what Ryegrass is. What they fail to realize is that all cereal grains are grass too, we just use the seed they produce as food.

Oats n rape.planted everythijg else but the deer loved the oats.i even tried it myself to see what the fuss was about.had a real sweet taste to it.cut up with some carrots would make a good salad with some ranch.rape tasted real green like.kinda like the peeling on a cucumber.deer love it though.

The ¼ acre test plots that I was showing earlier are in a larger field behind my house. I had the ability to watch the plots from a long distance with binos and observe which seed the deer preferred. Surprisingly the oats seemed to be as much, if not more preferred than any other. The rye was right in there neck and neck with the oats for a close 1-2. Both were preferred hands down over the wheat in my tests. If I had 7-8 deer feeding in the test plots, then it would be 4 in the oats and 3 in the rye…. or all of them in one or the other. One or two strays would mill around some and go to the radish patch and to the turnip patch where they would pick and nibble but the wheat only saw minor action here and there.

This is what I attribute that too. My soil is not the best in the world as we’ve seen. Wheat requires “a little more” to grow optimally as compared to rye and oats. It likes to have N applied and I believe the problem was that the wheat just didn’t grow well on my poor soil as compared to the rye and oats so it was in turn less palatable to the deer. There was N applied at planting but how much the wheat was actually able to use is probably pretty questionable. If I had only planted wheat would the deer have ate it? Yes, most likely, because as compared to everything else left in the woods at that time period the wheat would probably still be more preferred. However, give the deer other, more palatable options to choose from and it looks like they will make other choices.

This is not to say that wheat couldn’t be grown optimally and maybe it would increase its attractiveness. Maybe if you grew it on better soil and pampered it will more N then it would achieve more of its potential and in turn be as palatable as the other ones. That being said though….many of us don’t have good soil nor do we want to pamper something as basic as a cereal grain we throw out for deer.

4 - For many years I planted a mix of wheat, oats, and crimson clover. BSK talked a lot about the benefits of arrowleaf on here around 2004, and I started adding it to the mix then. It was a great addition.

I have also tried a bunch of other stuff, but never got what I thought was enough benefit to keep doing it. The deer love the winter peas, but they wouldn't let them grow much before eating them. My son-in-law has bought some to use this year, so I'll include them in the mix. Also, CNC has convinced me to give some rye at try too.

4 - My staple is forage oats.

Rye and forage oats.

Wheat and oat mixture (50/50) in conditioned soil. In highly acidic first-time plots, I prefer winter grazing rye because it will grow in the worst soils and is a good soil conditioner.

I’ve got a question…..Why is everyone planting forage oats instead of just plain oats?

I have planted both buck forage oats and just regular coker oats and I’ve not seen a difference. As a matter of fact the oats in the basket from the other thread are just plain oats. Correct me if I’m wrong, but it was my understanding that the forage oat varieties that are commonly sold commercially were more for people in northern climate who’s cold climate would winter kill the regular oats. We don’t really see that happen here in the south so is there really a need for a more costly specialty seed? Do the forage oats do something else besides handle colder temps better?

I used the bfo once and like you said was a waste of money to me. The deer around here didn't seem to give a crap what oats I planted.

I just use the most cold-tolerant oats I can find.

This Dog plants Coker 227 oats. Supposed to be the most cold tolerant "plain" oat. I mix Coker 227s with WMS Deer Magnet mix, makes for a fine plot, deer are just dying to eat it.

Do you replace the wheat or oats with the rye or just go 100% rye?

2 dogs what you paying a bag for the deer magnet ?

I ran test plots side by side and the deer told me what to plant.

They may not freeze where you hunt but where I hunt regular oats are dead and yellow by mid December. That's why I plant the more expensive forage oats.

When I was at Auburn I remember reading a study they did to see which of the common three (wheat, oats, and rye) that pen raised deer preferred. It turned out they preferred all three but at different times throughout the growing season. They attributed it to the fact that the deer seemed to prefer which ever one was growing the fastest at that time. If I remember correctly when a plant was growing at its fastest it also contained the most nutrition and the deer were able to detect this.

I think it was around $45 last year per 50lb, 50lb does an acre. Haven't checked, but I think it'll run the same this year. Maybe Truedouble remembers exact price, he got it same place I did. Add 15-25 lb coker 227 oats per 50lbs deer magnet and its one fine plot.

Here too. Bob oats which are a very common strain of seed oats will turn yellow and smell soured during the colder part of the winter, or at precisely the time when the deer hunting should be the best and hunting approach routes to the plots would be best.

Do tell more NightHunter......What were some of your observations? I'd be interested to here them.....

You guys that are seeing the winter kill on plain oats........

Have you planted them in stand alone plots without wheat mixed in? Just making sure some folks aren't getting them mixed up with the wheat in their mix turning yellow. Wheat is notorious for turning yellow come January.

Nope, not in plain oat plots. In plots mixed with Rye, Wheat and Oats. Oats have a much, much wider blade than wheat or Rye. They are very easy to pick out in a mixed plot as long as one knows what they are looking at.

Sshhh........just leave it alone!

I did the same thing several years ago in partnership with the Alabama Farmer's Co-Op.

But, what difference does that make? smile

In a first-time plot, I use 100% grazing rye. In fact, in really poor soil, I may use 100% rye two years before switching to a wheat/oats mixture the third year.

Excellent advice.

Don’t take this as harsh criticism or anything BSK but I don’t understand the reasoning for using only two years of rye and then switching to wheat. Is it just to keep down on costs by going with the cheaper wheat seed? If you looked at it from an accounting standpoint then are you really saving anything? Couldn’t our soil OM, lbs of nutrients per acre, etc... be seen as an asset in accounting terms? So if we think about it in those terms, then isn’t the rye really returning the price difference back to us but just in a different form than “cash on hand” and more in the form of an asset like a building? Wouldn't you want to continue to grow that asset? You still have the value of the asset and one could even argue that rye actually returns more real value back to our total assets. It just seems like 2 years worth of rye on a poor soil really doesn’t amount to a hill of beans long term. Yes, of course its going to make some difference but why stop there? If you don’t continue to try to improve the soil and just assume its “good” after two rye rotations……will it not revert right back to “poor” over time of we don't continue to take care of it?

I planted my normal mix of clovers with the forage oats (Buck Forage) vs. my mix of clovers with strait bob oats. I applied the same fert. (17-17-17)rate of 200 lbs. per acre at the time of planting and 50 lbs. per acre (ammonium nitrate) in late December.

Visual sightings of deer feeding on the forage oats side of the plot were nearly 2:1 vs the bob oats. There were no other treatments. I did have cameras out and pics. showed more utilization on the forage side. I did not keep up with the difference on that side of things. The exclusion cages showed a significant difference in browse pressure as you would expect. I was forgetful enough not to take pictures of the exclusions. I hope to try Eagle Seed's forage wheat and oats this year in similar tests.

I have always tested Brad's stuff and tied to give him my thoughts for my area. Everything has always been top notch.

It's not about not taking care of the soil after using a season or two of rye. It's about getting something to grow--that deer will eat--in TERRIBLE soil the first year or two. And by terrible soil, I'm talking cherty, rocky clay that has no topsoil and starts out with a pH of 4.3. It can take a year or two of lime and fertilizer to get that soil to adequately grow wheat, oats and clover. Rye will grow in that horrible soil and will add biomass to what will eventually become topsoil.

So with the deer showing that they like all three oats,wheat and rye grain but just at different stages of the plants growth. Would it not be beneficial to do a three way mix with all three in it? Just asking

One problem I can foresee is the height that rye can grow to. The wintergrazer rye I use will grow over 4 feet tall, unlike the wheat and oats, which could shade them out.

I used wheat for years. I switched to cereal rye last year. My plots on years when there are few acorns gets hamnered and my plots are to the ground by January. The rye is a more cold hardy plant. You will get more growth out of rye on those warm winter days than you will wheat. My hope is my plots will hold up better to heavy browsing. I've tried rape and a few other barasicas but my deer don't seem to like it much. I've tried groundhog radishes but I haven't had a lot of luck getting them to grow on my lease.

As others have pointed out, any plant needs to be tested side by side with other plants on the same property. I've seen plants that are absolutely candy to deer on one property be completely ignored by deer on another property (or even another field on the same property). Experiment, experiment, and experiment some more. Find what works best in your situation.

In my area, wheat is by far preferred over rye, but rye will grow in soil wheat couldn't think of growing in. So, sometimes my choice is going to be rye by default...

So BSK......

Are you using ryegrass, as in Marshall or something like that......or are you using cereal rye, like elbon or abruzzi?

Crimson, i think he's using cereal rye. I've never seen ryegrass get 4' tall, thats cereal rye. There's a big buck blend, that the co-ops sell. It's got wheat,oats,cereal rye, and either crimson clover as the last ingredient, or you can choose the one with AWP. I've used this in the past, but as someone posted earlier, i may go solo with rye this year, due to its growth potential. Rye grows when the temps are above 35 degrees. I'll still have some oats.

Buck Forage Oats
Wheat
Durana Clover
Chicory

I don't use nor recommend any form of ryegrass. I generally use a winter-grazing rye, such as Wintergrazer, Winter King or Elbon rye.

That’s what I thought, I just wanted to be 100% sure. The wintergrazer threw me off. If I’m not mistaken there is a ryegrass that is called something similar.

Ok then, now that I’m sure you’re talking about cereal rye, then back to my question……Why do you stop after only two years? Are the deer not eating the rye well? Rye just seems like a much more superior plant than wheat in terms of soil building properties. Why would we not want to work toward the goal of continuously improving the fertility of our “tillable” land? Why don’t we call that “plantable” land instead. Is there not value in that? If we look to the Midwest….is fertility not a driver of the value of the land? I just can’t help but look at it like as if we were an accountant doing book keeping. Fertile soil is an asset. Do you agree?

Wheat and oats are FAR more preferred over the cereal rye, plus the wheat and oats are much more digestible. I only use the rye because 1) it will grow in terrible soil; and 2) it is something deer will eat (although other plants are more preferred).




Yes, rye is a better soil builder (as well as a natural herbicide), but not as good of a soil builder as proper liming and fertilization.




Because attracting and feeding deer is of prime importance.




I'm sure some minor value (considering we're usually talking about little 1/2-acre plots scattered around a forested property), but no where near the value of the deer using the property.




Yes, but in the ridge-and-hollow hardwoods where I do most of my management work, deer are the #1 value of the land, with timber being #2.




Yes, but in my type of environment, other things hold far more value.

“Yes, rye is a better soil builder (as well as a natural herbicide), but not as good of a soil builder as proper liming and fertilization.”

BSK......I agree and disagree with some of what you said but the above statement is the part I have the most issue with. Lime and fert do not prefprm the same function as rye when we talk about actually further “BUILDING” the soil. They add nutrients to the soil to fill up its nutrient holding capacity to its current “full” point so to speak but once that point is reached then you can add all the lime and fert you want. Until we raise the CEC and the organic matter…..then no additional amounts of Ca or other nutrients can be held.

The reason we grow rye and the reason we lime and fertilize are not independent of one another. They are each doing they’re part to work toward a more fertile system total. Just adding lime and fert is only a portion of the whole pie. If all we ever do is add lime and fert…… then we are failing to work on growing the very portion of our soil that’s holding the lime and fert we’re applying.....unless all we ever rely on is the bare CEC of our soil. For many of us, that's pretty poor. The OM that the rye is building is also part of what’s delivering that lime and fert to the plants. To answer the question by saying that rye is not as good a soil builder as lime and fert is selling the whole process short and badly misrepresenting the complete cycle. Rye and other forms of OM is exactly what’s building the soil. The lime and fert are just filling it up with nutrients once its been built.

CNC,

No arguments with your above post. However, as someone hired to maximize the wildlife resources on a given property, which is more important to the client, deer drawn to and fed by the habitat of the property, or the quality of the soil in the food plots? Deer drawn to the property wins every time. Now soil quality is part of the plan, but it's a balancing act. Growing less desirable plants in limited food plot space for the sake of soil quality is going to lose out to growing food plot crops that draw deer. That's just the reality--fortunately or unfortunately, depending upon how you look at it--of the situation.

CNC,

Let me also point out that the types of properties I work with have very, VERY limited acreage for food plots. Imagine Skyline WMA in northeast AL. That's the type of terrain and habitat I work with, except their are no bottomlands at all. Steep hillsides drop almost vertically to rocky tumbling creeks. Ridge-lines are hog-backs, only 10-20 yards across. The only places available for food plots are along the long, narrow ridge-tops, where the soils are very thin, rocky, and highly acidic.

Because the acreage is so limited for food plots, most of the time no attempt is made to "feed" the local deer herd with food plots. Habitat management of the hardwoods is used to feed the deer with early stage natural regeneration (and a variety of management techniques used to produce the most summer forb growth). Food plots, often comprising no more than 1-2% of the property, are used simply to attract deer to the property in a poor acorn fall.

You can get Forage Oats without the deer on the bag.

And my deer tell me there is a difference.

Grain Rye and Forage oats/ Rape/turnips in most annual plots.

Can't believe your river bottom soil needs that!

Probably one reason the deer on my place like the rye so well.

I haven't planted wheat in two years though. They were walking through it to get to the oats and rye. I may go back to it this year a little though.

I will have to give them a try then if you guys say you have seen noticeable differences. What specific varieties are you guys using?

BSK......I hear what you're saying. That's not food plot type terrain for sure. I just can't believe though that wheat is that much more attractive in those type soils than rye. When I did side by side tests, the deer had no issues with the rye and showed preference to it over the wheat. How much less attractive could a rye/oat plot be than a wheat/oat plot? It doesn't seem like you would really be sacrificing all that much attractiveness but would be gaining lots in the form of improving the spots that you plant....however big or small.

For fall food plots, in preference, I would give wheat a 9, oats a 7, and rye a 2. I think it's just soil type. For instance, in our acidic loamy clay soils, I would give Austrian Winter Peas a 12 on a scale of 1 to 10. However, in the sandier soils of the Coastal Plain region of West TN, I would give AWP a 2.

That's interesting, I see the same thing with AWP's on my soil....they don't see to care for it too much. What I'm starting to question though myself is once I get my soil functioning properly if preferences might change due to healthier plants. I'm kind of starting to wonder if turnips, which have never been eaten much in the past....will be more preferred if they are grown in better soil conditions. We'll see.

What made me wonder about this was when I found some stray turnip plants one day in the edge of the woods from seed that I had been spilled or carried on my shoes, etc. There were only a few plants growing in the mulch but they were all thick and healthy looking. A week or so later I passed back by the spot and they were all browsed heavily. Just makes my wonder just how much soil health plays a role in the taste of the plant and how palatable it may be for the deer.

That's an excellent question CNC. To be honest, I've never tried rye in excellent soil. Maybe it would be a lot more preferred. And actually, I need to change my ratings as stated above. I would put cereal rye as a 5 or 6 when it first germinates. However, preference falls dramatically when (if) the plants grow to the "stemmy" stage, and the varieties sold up here do that fairly rapidly. Again, I'm not exaggerating when I say cereal rye will grow 4-feet tall here, and it is that way by mid-April. Now what would happen if the rye was continuously being eaten to the ground in the early part of the season? Would the new growth ever get to the stemmy stage? I don't know. Would rye grown in good soils be more palatable? I don't know.

the best of both worlds

BSK are you saying the vegetation of rye gets 4 feet tall, or the seed head gets 4 feet tall? Rye definitely has a much taller seed head than wheat or oats. Continually grazed rye does get more coarse as the year progresses but it doesn't get nearly as stemmy as undergrazed rye does.

I know you often write about how deer prefer one food on one place and ignore it in another. There are too many that think what works on their place is the best everywhere. It's not. Deer will NOT eat turnips here. I planted them for several years. I've put rape in my mix here the past 2 years and they haven't given much attention to it yet. I planted kale last year and I think they grazed it down as fast as it came up. I never saw a kale plant make it above 2" tall. The deer here have nip at AWP's but they bloom and make seed here every year. I don't intend to plant them again. Diakon radishes were devoured on my place. It's weird to me how they mow one brassica down and totally ignore another.

Furflyin....I think the reason some people see deer eat a certain plant and other don't is a combination of a couple factors:

1) How much natural food is present in relation to the deer population. Deer will eat many things but prefer some plants to others. If there are a lot of deer and little food then they won’t be as picky. They will eat what they have to in order to survive. In contrast, if there is lots of food and few deer, then they will pick and choose what they want and need, being more selective. Its kind of all just relative.

2)To some extent I think the type and fertility of the soil plays a role in how palatable a plant may be. That being said, I think some plants can reach a palatable state more easily than others under less than ideal conditions while others may require a different growing environment to reach a fuller potential and become more palatable to the deer.

As an example....BSK's soil, probably having a higher natural CEC than mine, might just be able to hold more N than my soil and therefore wheat is able to grow better....so in turn its more palatable and he sees the deer eat it, while I see them ignore it. It might just be one slight difference in the growing conditions that keep it from really being an apples to apples comparison.

I tend to not buy the notion that we each have deer with vastly different taste buds even though I do recongize that they have different natural diets as you move around the country. I instead think that its something to do with other factors that we might just be unaware of.

I've seen deer eat rape at one place where the soil isn't very good and not touch it in good soils.

N2T…..I don’t know the answer but I do think there are several factors at play. Someone might see deer eat turnips one year but not the next in the same exact field and the reason be because one year there was a drought and as a result native browse was scarce. The following year the deer may have plenty to eat and totally ignore them.

Another factor too could just be the quality of the native food as much as the quantity. A deer out in the desert living off briars and brambles might walk a mile for a turnip…. while a deer in an environment thriving with diverse native plant life might not pay them any mind.

My point being that there are too many factors involved just to be able to point to one reason and say “This is why my deer eat seed X and yours do not."

Either way, I may have to try the no-till method this year. It don't look like it's gonna dry out to get equipment on it. If so, I'll let you know how it turns out.

A couple weeks ago it finally dried up enough at my hunting club that I could drive in without walking the whole way to check on our summer plantings. It didn't last a week. I talked to the landowner a week or so after that and he said his rain gauge was literally overflowing. Many of us will be in that same boat with you I believe.

So what do you attribute them not eating turnip greens and barely eating rape in the same field with kale and diakon radishes that get eaten to the ground? All of which were planted in the same field with wheat, buck forage oats, rye and AWP's. The AWP's haven't been eaten much either.

I plant salad bars. I mix my own stuff. I haven't planted turnip greens in the past 2 years because the deer on our place won't touch them.

The mix I've planted the past 2 years:

Per 2 acres:
100 lbs of wheat
50 lbs of rye
50 lbs of buck forage oats (because they are the same price as forage oats here and are very cold hardy)
50 lbs of Austrian Winter Peas (or Whistlers)
5 lbs of rape
5 lbs of kale
5 lbs of diakon radishes
10 lbs Crimson Clover
600 lbs of 15-5-10 (300lbs per acre)
Lime as needed every other year

I usually plant 5-6 acres on our farm with that recipe in the fall. This fall I will only plant 1 1/2 acres. The other "food plot" ground is covered in a luscious stand of Alfalfa.

I dont think it really matters - wheat, oats or rye - just hit it with 100 lbs/acre of N about mid/late Dec and watch the action.

Like a thick plot do we Fur, that's a bunch of seed per acre!

That's 2 acres worth. I didn't divide it in half cause I didn't want folks asking where I was buying 25 lbs of rye or oats..... Also, as you know, we don't have as many deer around here as most parts of the state, so if I plant it thick it, for lack of the proper term, stunts the plants. Even after fertilizing it and getting the nutrient levels up, it keeps it from getting too mature and tough.

I know your mix is for 2 acres. I did divide in half, lota seed per acre.

It is, but it's done exceptionally well for me. My soil has improved exponentially since I've been planting it for food plots. I turn the biomass under every spring before planting summer plots on it. It's improved the soil despite not no tilling.