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?