Aldeer.com Forums Alabama Deer Talk Aldeer General Forum Greg Judy and Cows

Valid point. This is my second year.

Nice!!......

Seems like alot of fence work to me. Maybe im missing something

Just depends on the manner in which someone chooses to implement the practices…..The management wouldn’t be quite as intensive in terms of soil impact and such but I’m pretty sure you can accomplish some of the same goals by just running a low stocking rate across one big paddock if time were a big constraint……I don’t remember which video it was but one quail manager talked about doing just that…..I think it might be one of these two videos………

This is a technology that seems to be evolving pretty rapidly…..I don’t know how practical the cost is now…..It would be super cool to be able to map out the movement of the cattle over time and have that recorded for you…..I just chose a short video to show the technology…..there’s a lot more videos out there on it

Solar ear tag tracker is what I use.

Something you ought to be able to do with those collars is take advantage of the cattle’s desire to keep moving toward fresh growth……If we start out by creating a square for them to use and then once that square gets eaten down where we want ....then we could extend one side of the square out to allow the cattle to move toward fresh growth while at the same time closing up the back line farthest from them and have it where the herd was constantly on the move and being controlled completely from a phone…..If you extended out the northern line you would bring the southern line up to keep them from being able to go back……

I’m not for sure of the capabilities that these e-collar computer programs have but something that would be cool to be able to do is to program the square to slowly move north on its own at whatever pace matched the grazing…….In theory that would keep our cattle constantly on the fresh side of the paddock moving with the e-line as it moved…….Availability of water would be a constraint that would have to be addressed…..For most folks I think water is going to be your biggest issue to figure out how to deal with……I think I’ve watched a video where they were doing this exact thing but I may be making that up…..I think they had one of their e-collars on the water tank they pulled around with the tractor that wouldn’t allow the paddock line to move past it until the tank got moved

Well, the ranch I mentioned has been running cattle since about 1840, and the deer still avoid the cows. Does it take longer than that?

I do not question the use of cattle and rotational grazing to benefit the land and soil conservation. I do not question the deliciousness of a nice NY Strip.

All that said, I hate being around cows when hunting, and don't plan to ever have them on my property, nor would I lease property that was running cattle during deer season.

So are you saying that even if a piece of land held much better quality bucks than other properties in the area….. you would rather lease those other lesser properties instead simply because they dont have cattle on them??

I’ll say this too on the idea of the deer not liking the cows……I like to experiment so something I’d want to observe pretty closely is exactly just how do the deer respond to bringing in a cattle herd and turning them loose in an area……It’s a tool, it’s a tool, it’s a tool…… and there’s usually a lot of different options on ways to use a tool……. I grew up making man drives from time to time and that was always a lot of fun …….. a hundred cows would make for some excellent drivers……Oh the weather isnt cooperating on this hunt for y’all……Lets see what we can make happen from a couple paddocks over……

I'm sure there would be "cons" to having the cattle on the land but I think the "pros" would outweigh them by so much that they wouldnt matter......When you're grippin and grinnin with that booner you wont care anymore

Correct. Doesn't matter how good the deer are if they are nocturnal because of cow activity.

Starting at the 2:20 mark.....

The point with posting that first video was not to try and say that cows never bother deer…….but rather to make the point that its not an "all or nothing" situation where we can make definitive statements either way……Its not accurate just to say that cows make deer go nocturnal and label it that way……

I hate to be a conspiracy theorist…….but if you’ve watched these videos I’ve posted and even remotely get the concepts that are being talked about……..then you have to ask yourself the question…..How do we get 200 shows deep into a Wild Turkey Science podcast without even the mention of this type of habitat management?? ………..I have to give it a big hmmmmm…….

I’ve never owned deer, but I’ve owned cattle for 25 years. I’ll continue to run a cow calf operation on normal grazing practices with herbicides and fertilizer. It’s worked pretty good for me so far.

But, for those that wanna do it other ways, I wish them the best, we all have our own ways in stuff.

My uncle had many acres acres and few cows. He had about 30 cows running around 900 acres on the choctawhachee river at various times. He never bought hay, and made his own fence post out of white oak. Between cows, renting hunting rights and timber he did okay I reckon. A lot of people thought he was backwards in his management. He apparently was way ahead of his time. And the hunting was jam up.

Something I dont understand about the current situation is that if inputs are costing folks so much, etc......Then why dont they cut back on the amount of cows they're running and not have to feed hay??

Could you not say the same about deer? Why not kill more deer and lessen the herd? Don’t do a nothing to help the deer herd. Let them live solely on what Mother Nature gives em. No feeders, plots, minerals, no nothing.

But to answer your question. It pays to feed cattle, no matter what there bringing. You’ll never starve a profit out of cattle.