Poultry Poop as Fertilizer for Oaks.

[Lincoln Hawk]

Jasper, for me your link went to the main meateater site. This should get folks to the article itself.

https://www.themeateater.com/wired-to-hunt/whitetail-management/the-truth-about-fertilizing-oaks-trees

[Smart]

fertilizing oak trees to make more acorns or better acorns has been a myth for a long time. No significant difference. I can give you a bunch of articles but here is a good one:

I've been hearing the myth of fertilizer stakes or any kind of fertilizer around oaks making acorns sweeter hence more attractive to deer for years. Interesting to read some unbiased opinions and research

[Killer]

I've been hearing the myth of fertilizer stakes or any kind of fertilizer around oaks making acorns sweeter hence more attractive to deer for years. Interesting to read some unbiased opinions and research

I don’t know if it will make an oak tree have more mast I think it could, but it makes it more palatable to deer. Sweeter, higher protein, etc
As Gar pointed out deer will walk over unfertilized oaks and food plots to get to fertilized ones. Herbivores can smell, taste whatever the difference. Cattle are the same way.

And farmers don’t waste their money on orchards fertilizing them for looks, pecan orchard etc ; it increases nut quantity and quality. Oaks are very similar trees to pecans.

[Greenheadless]

You are right about a lot of things but fertilizing oak trees to make more acorns or better acorns has been a myth for a long time. No significant difference. I can give you a bunch of articles but here is a good one:

Good stuff, thanks for sharing.

[txtimetravler]

I believe sackett is an arborist. I’d follow his advice

[hog_down]

I did my masters thesis on fertilizing trees and I would NEVER put hot fertilizer around an oak tree.

when you say 'hot', what exactly does that mean? I am trying to help my oak trees up at my place with coffee grounds, shavings from the saw mill, fertilizer, and other organic materials. Do you think I am wasting my time, or am I doing any good? Asking because I value your opinion, and you know a ton more than I do. Thanks.

[jaspermac]

Hot is because of its super high nitrogen content. It can burn the roots. Trees and grasses are different and use the elements differently.

The only fertilizer I use is nitro phos wood master for trees. I fertilize 4 times per year on my yard live oaks and twice a year on my nursery stock.

[Smart]

I don’t know if it will make an oak tree have more mast I think it could, but it makes it more palatable to deer. Sweeter, higher protein, etc
As Gar pointed out deer will walk over unfertilized oaks and food plots to get to fertilized ones. Herbivores can smell, taste whatever the difference. Cattle are the same way.

And farmers don’t waste their money on orchards fertilizing them for looks, pecan orchard etc ; it increases nut quantity and quality. Oaks are very similar trees to pecans.

Sounds like campfire fodder passed around from campfire story teller to campfire storyteller after reading some of the articles above and below .

“If fertilized acorns were sweeter or of higher quality, we would have found significant differences in sugars and total digestible nutrients, but we didn’t,” Harper said. Professor Craig Harper at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville routinely repeats this advice when hunters request fertilizing tips for oaks. Harper said hunters typically want a quick way to produce fat, juicy acorns too sweet for deer to resist.

“Most deer hunters only think about this during deer season,” Harper said. “If they have oaks where they hunt, they think acorns are the deer’s primary food source, and they want an easy way to transform acorns into bait. They’ve read or heard that fertilizer is magic dust. I have to tell them they’ve been misled; that they’ll just waste their time, sweat, and money hauling fertilizer into the woods.”

Harper, a wildlife management professor and UT Extension wildlife specialist, traces oak-fertilizing falsehoods to mass advertising from the 1990s through the 2000s. Harper assumed fertilizer companies had research to back up their claims, and so he talked to a sales representative in 1998 to learn how their fertilizers sweeten acorns and boost production.

“I was seeing claims galore in hunting magazines and TV shows about the many benefits of fertilizing oaks,” Harper said. “I thought maybe I’d missed something, and wanted to learn more. I talk to thousands of people every year through our agricultural extension program, so I can’t just recommend something without studying data from research. When I got that sales rep on the phone, I soon learned his company had nothing for data. And I mean nothing. The best he could say was, ‘Well, it stands to reason that fertilizing would help.’ I had to end the conversation. I felt so na?ve for thinking they’d never make claims without supporting data.”

[stevieray54]

I most definitely would spread around the drip line. Especially with it being winter and getting some rain to soak it in to the soil

[RiverRat1]

I'm not interested in the articles. I put out many tons of composted chicken litter every year. I have post oak, red oak, and pin oak around my food plots. The ones that get litter every year bear twice as heavy and deer run past other trees to get to those.

I'm not telling you what I read on the net, I'm giving you first hand experience.

Where do you get tons of chicken poop? Like literally 4,000+ pounds of it?

How do you compost it?
I have lots of chicken poop but not tons.

[GarGuy]

Where do you get tons of chicken poop? Like literally 4,000+ pounds of it?

How do you compost it?
I have lots of chicken poop but not tons.

I buy it from a commercial chicken farm. He piles about 100,000 lbs for me every year and let's it compost till the next year. We spread it in august.

[RMW]

5lbs of chicken chit around a big oak does nothing, need to put down a bunch

[RiverRat1]

I buy it from a commercial chicken farm. He piles about 100,000 lbs for me every year and let's it compost till the next year. We spread it in august.

That's awesome.
What do you use it all on? Just natural oak and other trees or do you grow fruit trees or something else? And so you just spread year old chicken poop that's not mixed with anything but a little dirt maybe? Or do they use sawdust or hay or something under the chickens at the farm that it gets mixed with?

[GarGuy]

That's awesome.
What do you use it all on? Just natural oak and other trees or do you grow fruit trees or something else? And so you just spread year old chicken poop that's not mixed with anything but a little dirt maybe? Or do they use sawdust or hay or something under the chickens at the farm that it gets mixed with?

There are some shavings in it but almost all poop. I use it on my food plots

[Man]

I may be ignorant to the subject but I never understood why people continue to fertilize large trees around the base when their root system spans out 30 feet or more.