An annual with about a bazillion seeds that lay there until you're not looking and then germinate after you plant the stuff you want

All ryegrass is a perennial. Marshall included

Whats the deal with the "perennial rye" that you see that costs three times as much? Same stuff?

Yep, ryegrass is the devil.

ESP if you’re a wheat farmer

If it's a half acre field designed to get deer to stop long enough to take a shot, then who cares? I hunted on a place several years ago where the owner planted about 10ac of the stuff over 4 fields and we saw deer out there munching it every evening.

Mine will walk right through the worst area to get to the good grasses.

I guess they shouldn't be allowed to advertise it as annual, then.

If there isn't much food around (pine plantations) and you have poor soil (pine plantations) there is hardly a better choice than annual rye grass. The places where I've planted it and it gets heavily grazed it doesn't come back naturally, deer eat too much of it for it to set seed. It will also turn hard as a rock logging landing soil into dirt you can do something with in a season or two.

Loved Marshall when I had cows. I have seen many a deer in ryegrass, but there are better things for them to eat.

Nope. Ryegrasses can be annual, biennial, or perennial. Most of what we see on roadsides is annual.

Interesting, I learned something. Please explain what the difference is in Rye and Ryegrass.

I've been planting food plots for around 40 years with a lot of trial and error involved. I know what works best for me but I still try fields or parts of fields to continue trying something new. I also know sometimes rye grass is the ONLY option. There are some members on here that I planted about 100 acres of rye grass where they hunt or at least part of what they hunt this year and years in the past. The soil PH is about 7.0 naturally. About 15" down there is a solid layer of limestone. I'm not talking a bunch of rocks. I'm talking like ONE huge rock about 12" thick covering hundreds of acres. When the winter rains start it saturates that 15" of soil fairly quick. The water can't go down because of the rock. So, there are MONTHS of wet, REALLY wet, soil. The only products that has survived these conditions has been rye grass, Chickasaw clover, and Berseem clover. And deer are killed on these fields.

In a nutshell, rye is a cereal grain and ryegrass is a cool-season forage grass. That’s not to say rye cannot be used as a forage grass, but it isn’t as desirable for that use as ryegrass is. I’m speaking strictly for cattle here. Deer will eat both.
Also, ryegrass is a Lolium species and rye is in the genus Secale.

I wasn’t referring to cereal rye.

Every plant replicates. Every plant makes seeds. That doesn’t make it a perennial.

To the uneducated , sounds like one of them shouldn't be called Rye. I know it can be confusing . You have to watch the goof balls at the Co-op , you tell them Cereal Rye they may load Rye grass in your truck and vice versa.

I think your talking about Jed’s farm. A few seasons ago we had a 20 acre field planted in Nelson ryegrass and it had 2 140”+ bucks killed off it. We would see anywhere between 20-30 deer per afternoon and 5-8 would be bucks. They would be grazing at 3:00 when we went to the field and would still be in the field at dark. The deer would walk across our food plots to eat the Nelson Ryegrass.

Yes. I planted the field beside the trailer is all I recall planting on that side of the road. Saw the most fawns I seen down there this year. Also found 2 really nice sheds this spring where that Nelson grass was planted a couple of years ago. NOTHING went right planting this year from flat tires, seed not flowing, busted hydraulic lines,etc. I'm ashamed to be associated with the work that I did. Probably will look terrible.

Thanks John got it today.