A year in the life of a farm

[BIG BONE]

Can't wait to see how he turns out

[elgato]

Poor old coon. Protein privileges revoked. He can climb the leg but no place to sit

[BillyloMexico]

I call that a win!!

[elgato]

Planted the sunn hemp with cowpeas Thursday. Already up.Should be interesting. Planted 100 lbs sunn hemp with 150 lbs. cowpeas in a 4.5 acre field. Here you can see the newly sprouted hemp on the left with a pea to the rt.

[Sticks&Strings]

Like everyone I hate sharing my deer pellets with coons and have always figured they account for a material amount of consumption and waste. Killing them is like dipping the ocean with a teaspoon. So I've been trying different things to coon proof the feeders.

Here are 3 different feeders I use on the farm. The trick is to eliminate a place for them to sit or a way for them to get to the spout. So far we have yet to get the first pic of a coon on any of these . We get the rare boar doing a chin up but doesn't appear he can eat much and waste underneath the feeders has stopped. Actually we are seeing coons underneath the feeders doing clean up which I like.

Note one of the feeders was designed to be coon proof requiring no modification. Works perfectly. Made in Ms. for anyone interested.

Can we get more information on these? I assume that the last feeder is the one made in Ms. How much does it hold?

[elgato]

That feeder is made by Steel Outdoors. They come in various sizes of which I use the 600 lb model. I like them a lot. Easy to load, flow is good, don't get a lot of rain contamination and of course coon proof. They have a good website with lots of info. Dwayne McLemore is president and a good guy.

Let me know if you need more info.

[elgato]

I had the privilege of spending the morning recently with Dr. Harry Jacobson. For those that are unfamiliar with Dr. Jacobson his work has defined much of modern deer management today. He ran the research department at Ms. State where many of the landmark studies about whitetails were conducted. Among other things he did extensive research into the genetics of spikes, { don't shoot them } developed the first camera survey techniques and created the DMAP programs many state govts. provide to better help private landowners manage their deer. His list of accomplishments is extensive and goes far beyond those mentioned.

After retiring from Ms. State he went in to private consulting and has managed some of the best ranches in the U.S. as well as mule deer in Mexico, and desert big horn sheep.

Was a fun morning catching up and touring the farm. Many of the principles I employ on the farm come directly from him. He offered an interesting tip on herd management that I intend to use this season.His suggestion is to do a camera survey of my property and identify all the yearling bucks. Yearling bucks are easy to identify and represent approximately 1/2 of the previous years fawn crop. { Obviously does being the other half }

From there a decision can be made as to how many does to harvest. If the intention is to hold population stable then remove does equal to the yearling buck count. Adjustments can be made form there depending on if you want to increase or decrease your numbers. Cool trick.

Harry is contemplating writing a book...It will be a must read for anyone wanting to learn from his 40 yrs experience.

[scott1022]

Very cool. I bet that was a great experience for him to see your farm and all of the work you put into it.

[Mr Sid]

I sure would have enjoyed a back seat on that tour - a lot of whitetail knowledge exchanged on that trip, not all coming from Dr. Jacobson. Thanks for sharing that bit with us.

[scarecrow]

You have our attention sir! Awesome!! Thanks for taking the time to share. I've heard of no till but what is the drill part? Brad

[elgato]

You have our attention sir! Awesome!! Thanks for taking the time to share. I've heard of no till but what is the drill part? Brad

A no till drill allows you to plant without plowing first. There are coulters or blades that cut a slit in the ground where seeds are dropped. Then wheels cover the top. Many advantages to this type planting.

[deer farmer]

Thanks for telling us of his visit with you. Maybe when he gets he book out we can all learn from him. But thanks to your posting here, I've been listening and learning from your experiences. Thanks for that. I am sure he was impressed with your place because I am . in my situation, where I am hunting 175 acres across the road from a 9,000 acre wildlife refuge, are there any things that pop up in your mind that he said to you or your thoughts that might improve this local a deer herd ? Texas Parks and Wildlife is involved here with such things as burns, turkey stocking and etc but as a private land owner with smaller acreage, where might you go with this? A drill would be way better than my present seeding but I would have to get a larger tractor (hindsite is 20/20) anything ? Thanks again for your life on a farm Oh! Do you trap for yotes or cats?

[WTJim]

Coon cuffs at every feed\water station, a handful marshmallows and a .22. All you need with some time to fix coon problem. I've killed over 30 last 2 years. I went to war when they killed my laying hens one night.

[elgato]

Took a ride on the farm yesterday...in a boat! Between me and my neighbor probably have 600-700 acres flooded with the water still rising. Most of the flooding is on my neighbors farm and all his plots are under water. I lost only a couple of fields to flooding. You may recall both farms are managed as one under the same fence.

The bigger problem is that many of the plots I planted are so soggy the plants are rotting or stunted. The clover where they are not under water is doing ok. But the beans, peas, sunflowers etc. are suffering. And it has already rained over 2" today with 3" likely. Rain in the forecast as far out as reported .

We also have struggled keeping the feeders filled because of the rain. Simply can't travel the farm in a truck without tearing up roads.
All in all still in pretty good shape and will be interesting to see effect of this once it dries out. I don't know how the crops will respond???

All this said it's easy to keep a perspective when compared against the tragedies in Houston and other places. Rough stuff.

[elgato]

Thanks for telling us of his visit with you. Maybe when he gets he book out we can all learn from him. But thanks to your posting here, I've been listening and learning from your experiences. Thanks for that. I am sure he was impressed with your place because I am . in my situation, where I am hunting 175 acres across the road from a 9,000 acre wildlife refuge, are there any things that pop up in your mind that he said to you or your thoughts that might improve this local a deer herd ? Texas Parks and Wildlife is involved here with such things as burns, turkey stocking and etc but as a private land owner with smaller acreage, where might you go with this? A drill would be way better than my present seeding but I would have to get a larger tractor (hindsite is 20/20) anything ? Thanks again for your life on a farm Oh! Do you trap for yotes or cats?

Wish I could help but from what I've read you are doing seems like you are on the right path.

I do no predator control here or Mexico. Dont really believe in it. frankly I like a good balance of predator/prey/habitat. I've never seen any problems resulting from predation though we have all the predators expected for the habitat. I think habitat mgt. is key to life with predators.

The exception to all this is every now and then we work on the mountain lions in Mexico. I think we have more than ever now and last year we took 6 out of the neighborhood { neighborhood is ~ 100,000 acres } Doubt it has a big impact as we are still seeing a few and I don't think one can really impact lion numbers with guns.