Aldeer.com Forums Alabama Deer Talk ALTurkey Talk -- Beards and Spurs Sea of Grass

I want to play. Are my forbs green enough? They’ve received considerably more rainfall than Gobblers.

I took these today while riding around with the wife. I manage them with frequent fire and occasionally fall discing.

Oh, I’ve heard and seen quail at every one of these in the last week. No hogs though.

A few more on a tract in north AL that has as many quail as anywhere I know around here.

That right there is SHONUFF quality vegetation management for quail, deer, turkey, hawks, owls, rats, coyotes, rat snakes, grasshoppers, moths, caterpillars and maybe even a Sasquatch. It is wildlife rich.

Whatchu talking bout Willis??.... ..... We had over 9 inches of rain here last month. Heck I was thinking about giving him the benefit of the doubt and saying they could be suffering from lack of O2......

We had between 17”-21” in May depending on where you were. It’s been a wet one and there’s lots of forbs right now.

I gotcha……I thought you were insinuating that we were suffering from drought or something……That’s all its been this spring is rain and more rain

Another sea of grass property looking at burned and unburned. OMG the forbs and legumes! Yep lots of grass but in between a wealth of good food, cover and bugs!

This is the unburned side

some of the spots are pretty thick with indian grass

but the legumes growing in amongst them are amazing




a little ragweed to go with your legumes

It couldn't be more obvious how MANY forbs and legumes grows within the grass clumps


[img]https://i.postimg.cc/XvRcT06n/IMG-7058.jpg[/img]
ALL of these look like a grass monoculture in the fall and winter when the grass is the only thing showing.....until your pants are covered with delectable beggarweeds.

All these pics make me want to light a pine stand on fire asap

CNC will be along shortly with a cut and paste video to tell you how wrong you are.

Need to hit it with a grass select herbicide…..What would be great is if you could go through spraying like 6-8 ft swaths through the stand and then skip say 4-6 ft and spray another swath and so on.....so that you're thinning the grass and not completely eliminating it……or……you could run some cows across for a few days to let them target graze the grasses and fertilize the broadleafs……I kinda wonder though with it all being stressed and yellowy how well they would graze it. If you look the plant color is a yellow hue on a lot of it and many of the tips on the grasses are firing browns and purples……It might depend on the breed of cattle how finicky they would be to such.

How would you keep the cows from eating the broadleafs?

I wouldn’t be worried about the cattle nibbling on a few of the broadleafs……As long as they took a bunch of that grass and converted it to manure and stirred up the seed bank in the process I’d consider it a success……It’s the new flush of vibrant green growth that comes back after you take them off that you’re after……I might still hit it with a grass select herbicide after it started growing back…..The plant health in that stand is on the struggle bus and its most likely stemming from the imbalance of grass on marginal upland soil…..Yellowy nutrient deficient plants don’t do us a whole lot of good.....They should be a deep green with lime green (almost fluorescent colored) growing tips

Here’s an example of good plant color…….This is in June as well…..Deep green with lime green growing tips

Cows will eat every broadleaf in there before they eat the grass. Mostly anyway. There won’t be nothing left but dog fennel

I doubt that…..I cant say from having firsthand ever watched a cattle herd graze a stand like that but I’ve researched about every video out there on grazing diverse natives and I’ve yet to come across one example of anything remotely close to such happening…..but…….. when looking at the current condition of that stand I’d be far more concerned with improving the fertility of the soil and the species composition balance for the next flush of growth than about how many poor quality broadleafs the cows eat out of this one stand…….Like I said before, I’m just hoping they’ll eat it period in that condition

Treating this stand with a round of “cow” isn’y robbing the deer herd of a mass amount of lush forage…..Its creating it for them on the future reflushes…….This stand wouldn’t see “cow” again for months……meanwhile the deer and other game forage on the new growth……That’s how rotational grazing is suppose to work……Everyone that does it say the wildlife come in right behind the cow as you would expect….the same way they come in right behind the fire

In those videos I just posted of Dr Lashley he talks about how the forage quality after fire falls off over time…….On a two year rotation your basically getting the best quality forage for the first few months and then its falling off for then next 18-20 or what have you…..The idea of applying “cow” rotationally is resetting that flush on a quicker time table……..After fire when that forage quality falls off then you apply cow for a short duration to create another reflush the best quality plant growth……The cattle are also serving a vital role in keeping your soil cycle efficiently recycling……efficient decomposition and all……the things that create good lush plant growth to begin with…

CNC apparently knows as much about cows as he does turkeys. The throw and mow forum called, they want you back

I’ve seen it plenty of times. Plenty. 95% of those Forbs will be gone if you turned cows out in that. They won’t eat the dog fennel but that’s about it. And they will eat the yellow stuff too. They don’t care. It’s a cow.

Well….like I said, either way.........when looking at the situation above and trying to fix the issues its having for the long term that's really not a big concern…….It would be like not using fire because its consuming low quality forage……Applying ”cow” is just applying another tool like a roller chopper or a drip torch, etc……They reset succession and create that new flush of growth that’s the most attractive and nutritious…….Cow is the only one though that applies manure in the process……Converting a bunch of excess grass forage to fertilizer would be huge in restoring proper function and fertility to stands like we’re discussing…..

Again, I’m not trying to knock any individuals……I’m just pointing out pretty serious flaws I think we have in the system……We’re not managing nearly as productively as we think in a lot of these situations…….and we are for sure way off from what we have the potential to manage for if we made a few adjustments and focused on soil health, plant health, and stand composition to go along with the fire……

Here's a few things concerning grass clumps that I think will hold true……You could probably make a couple nice slides for the slide show out of it …..You are going to have…..1) the density of grass clumps the system is able to efficiently support at any individual site……..and…… 2) the density needed to meet the landowner objectives……

The first one #1) is going to be dictated by the soil type (sand, silt, blackbelt gumbo, etc)…….the location (on a ridge top, in a bottom, on a north or south facing slope, etc)……..and the fertility and management of the topsoil………In general the drier and less fertile the site, the lower number of grass clumps the system can productively run…..I think it's probably a matter of not having the water and nutrient capacity to grow and cycle a high tonnage of carbon naturally…..

Then there’s #2) the number required to meet the landowner’s objectives……..I think this density is way, way lower than most people realize when it comes to turkey and deer……Even if we throw in quail I think the ideal density is still way lower than we envision and manage for in many situations…..What I’m getting at is…..Even if the site quality from #1 allows for much higher grass density like the picture I posted the other day from the blackbelt stand of nearly pure 6ft tall grass…..we don’t necessarily need the extra grass production for deer, turkey, quail management…..In fact it only works against us to produce more and more by feeding the wrong wildlife…..

Dr. Craig Harper, who is probably the leading authority on early successional habit, says you don’t need more than 30% grass.