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Mike Howell (00:08):
The Dirt with me, Mike Howell. An economics podcast where I present the down and dirty agronomic science to help grow crops and bottom lines. Inspired by economics.com, farming’s go-to informational resource, I’m here to break down the latest crop nutrition research, news and issues. Helping farmers make better business decisions through actionable insights. Let’s dig in.
(00:38)
Well, hello again everyone. Welcome back to The Dirt. Got an exciting episode in store for you today. It is really hot and dry in my part of the world. It’s time people start thinking about planting the food plots for their wildlife food plots this time of year. Everybody I see is driving a pickup truck, pulling the trailer that’s got a tractor and a fertilized spreader and a disc on it. That means they’re headed to the hunting camp and getting ready to plant these food plots.
(01:01)
I have Bill Maily with me today and he’s going to help us go through this. Now I first met Bill back in 1991, that was the summer I got out of high school and I started checking cotton with the extension service and that happened to be the same time that Bill moved to Hinds County and was the county agent there. Bill was out trying to get to know all the farmers and I was riding around checking cotton fields and we spent a lot of time trumping through cotton fields that summer. Some good times back then.
(01:25)
Bill, if you will, introduce yourself and tell everybody what you did with Extension. I know you had several positions through the years and what you’re doing now.
Bill Maily (01:32):
Okay, Mike. It’s good to be with you, first of all. Let’s see, I went to work for extension service in 1986 and I retired three years ago by the way. I was a 4H agent, then a county agent, and then they split us up and I was a South Mississippi wildlife specialist and then they thought I was having such a good time, they gave me the whole state. But my main focus was sport fisheries management. But my degree does cover this white-tailed deer and I have a lot of experience in the food plot part.
Mike Howell (02:00):
That’s what we want to talk about today. Now, when I was growing up, we didn’t have near as many white-tailed deer running around and it was quite an oddity if you saw one. And we were hunting for meat and it really didn’t matter how big the antlers got, we wanted something to put in the freezer, and I’m still kind of that way myself to date. Those small ones tend to eat a lot better than those old big ones. But I know a lot of people want to get that big trophy they can put on the wall. In my 50 years of looking around the world and seeing different white tailed deer, I’ve picked up on a few things that increase that antler size. One of those is genetics. If we don’t have the right genetics, it doesn’t matter what happens, he’s not going to grow to be a big 12 point buck. Another factor is time. We’ve got to give these animals time to develop and mature out before they’ll get to that maximum antler size. Another factor is nutrition, and that’s where we want to focus on today is making sure we get the proper nutrition to these animals.
(02:49)
Now, a lot of people will go out this time of year, August, September and plant those food plots and some people will just plant them, some people won’t put any fertilizer out there at all. When I was with extension and Bill, I’m sure you get the same, “I just can’t get any deer to come into my food plots.” Well, that’s probably because it doesn’t taste very good. So first off, let’s talk about food plots and what needs to be in a food plot. What’s some plant species and a proper mix that somebody needs to consider when they’re planting a food plot?
Bill Maily (03:16):
First of all, let me say this, that the food plot in part of management is a year round program. We should have already had soil samples and if lime needed to be put out, it should have already been done, but it’s never too late, Mike. If you haven’t done it, you need to do it. And as far as that industry, the food plot industry is a mega dollar industry now. If you want to grow a particular mixture or blend, somebody’s got it put together. Now, back when we were young, I hate to say this, we planted rye grass. The problem we have with rye grass is a lot of folks are changing, they’ll want to go to year round food plots and all this kind of good stuff, which is great. But when you go year round, you’re not a hunter anymore, you’re a farmer. You have to do like we was talking about a while ago, scout that. Make sure there’s some bug problems, treat them, that kind of stuff.
(04:04)
But you look at the nutritional value of any of those blends, I tell people all the time, don’t go do it because it says it does this, do it because you know it does that. And that goes back to what you said a while ago, everything goes back to the soil. If you’re planting a legume, and I think the new people call it legume, the pH level has to be different than when you plant those grasses and small grains and rye type things. So once you decide what you’re going to do, that’s where that soil sample comes in. Because all those fertilizers you put out there, if the pH is not proper you are not going to get any uptake of that money you’re putting into dirt.
(04:43)
So it has to be a year-round program and if somebody doesn’t understand all that, the extension service has agents in every county, and Mike’s done expose me to y’all, he’ll sell me out and give y’all my number. But anyway, I love to do it and I’m retired and I’m still running like a wild man. But, you got to take care of those food plots. You can’t put them out, forget them, because even right now we’ve got people that’s already planted them, Mike, and you know what we’re doing?
Mike Howell (05:09):
Checking soil samples and making adjustments.
Bill Maily (05:11):
And spreading armyworm. It’s not just the soil itself, there’s other issues you got to deal with. Planting too early can be a problem, planting too late. Some of them are clubs say, “Well, we’re not going to be able to hunt over it. It ain’t going to be ready.” Well, there’s other ways to hunt besides sitting on the food plot. It’s a year-round thing, but there’s all kinds of blends available. I saw one the other day, they had like nine different kinds of plant seeds in it.
Mike Howell (05:34):
Bill, that brings up an interesting point with the mixture of different types of seeds and legumes and grasses and perennial crops, you mentioned soil sampling and how important the pH was. How is that going to affect when we have a mixture of different crops out there and some prefer one pH and some prefer another? What do we need to think about when we’re working on that?
Bill Maily (05:52):
Think about what we said a while ago. If you want to do those blends, you need to know what those requirements are are. Say, I mix a grass blend for one of our plots and I decided to throw some clover in there and I don’t think about that adjustment, clover’s probably not going to do so well. And they try to blend them where there’s an average pH and you can get some production on all of them. But if you’re going to focus on a legume versus a rye or something, think about it where you put the seeds to the ground.
Mike Howell (06:16):
Okay. And, Bill, I’m glad you mentioned soil sampling right off the bat. That’s something we’ve spent a lot of time talking about on the program over the last couple of years. What else do we need to be concerned with on that soil sample? What other fertilizers do we need to work on?
Bill Maily (06:28):
First of all, let me tell you this, I was a county agent for 30 years and a good county agent whenever he had a problem always said, “Have you run a soil test?” It all goes back to that. The pH has to be different on legumes versus grasses. The fertilizers that you put out are different on legumes versus grasses. Grasses, you got to look at nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. Legumes fix their own nitrogen if they’re inoculated and they’re working properly. So make sure you check that, see if they’re inoculated seed. And then you focus on a higher pH and the phosphorus and potassium level. If you look at the nutritional value, a legume is going to be a higher nutritional value for that deer versus the grass. But it’s harder to keep it productive, you have to stay on top of it.
Mike Howell (07:14):
With the different conditions from these different crops. Is it better to plant them in a mix like we can go to the store and buy a pre-mix? Or would it be a better idea for somebody to plant strips in an area and have a strip of a grass crop and a strip of a lagoon and bring the animals in that way, feed them that way?
Bill Maily (07:28):
You just said something that always got me in all my meetings. I’d ask them, why do you plant a food plot? And you know what? Most of them would say Supplemental nutrition. Well, they’re okay in the fall and winter, believe it or not, it’s spring and summer when they’re having phones when they need help. So the main reason we plant food plots, is what? So that we can see deer. I ain’t got no problem with that. But how much value is that food plot just if you’re attracted deer? Now focus always did when I took over a piece of property was doing evaluation of the property and manage the property to the most productive level we can. If we need to supplement it with food plots, that’s fine. But if we’re playing food plots where we’ve done all that management, if so we can… Especially in my case, I take kids hunting and I want to sit a kid in a food plot because I want a kid to make sure he sees deer or she sees deer. Okay, I’m not saying food plots are wrong. I’m saying that the focus that some folks have on why they’re putting food plots is not quite what they should be. And there’s a lot of money spent on food plots.
Mike Howell (08:29):
So if we’re maintaining these food plots and we’re looking at attracting deer, bringing deer in, and that’s what most of the people are doing or that’s my interpretation, most people are planting them in the fall and try to bring deer in, especially for bow season. Nutrition wise, what do we need to be making sure we put out there? NPK, micronutrients, what are we looking for?
Bill Maily (08:48):
Just always keep this in the back of your mind, nitrogen produces green and protein is a nitrogen chain. So the level of nitrogen, especially in those grasses, to a point, the higher the nitrogen, the higher digestibility is going to be and the higher the desirability is going to be. We’ve done projects where we put different levels of nitrogen out and they walk right straight across the low ones, boom and jump in a higher level. I also have to keep NPK levels because that’s producing root systems. If you put too much nitrogen, don’t have the right phosphorus or potassium level, you can grow a plant to death. So you got to have that balanced fertilizer.
(09:26)
Another point is always remember this and it told me this the first day I went to work for extension service and went to the agronomy class, an acre of grass, especially your oats and wheat and stuff, we use about a pound of nitrogen a day. So one of the things we usually get calls on, “Oh, my food plot looks great.” And then about December, “Oh, my food plot’s turning yellow.” And that’s either a pH problem, a moisture problem, but most of the time they put 100 pounds of ammonium nitrate out and in 90 days that only had about 35 days worth of nitrogen on the plant. So you have to supplemental feed those grasses.
Mike Howell (10:03):
One and done is usually not the way to go, we have to make applications during the season as well and make sure those crops are growing to meet the needs that these deer are going to need.
(10:11)
Bill, there’s other ways that these deer can get the nutritional requirements. Obviously not all deer even have access to the food plots. I was doing some shopping last year looking at some of these supplements that are on the market. There’s a lot of supplements out there these days and you can spend as much money on those supplements as you want. But looking at the ingredients on those, a lot of those are the same nutrients that we would be putting out if we were fertilizing a crop. So talk a little bit about that and which way may be better and which way does the deer prefer to take up those nutrients?
Bill Maily (10:39):
Well, like I told you a while ago when I’m looking at a piece of property, we’re going to evaluate that piece of property and try to make it the most productive it can be. So, when we’re doing that we look at the different vegetations out there. And if we can add a little fertilizer here or add a little fertilizer here and induce more production of that native plant, I feel better about it because we know it’ll grow here. We’re bringing in plants that normally don’t grow in that food plot, but this native plant did and we’re trying to introduce a new plant. Something you said earlier about strip planting and so forth, try that. But I’ve had people call me and say, “Look, there’s this new fangled blend out there and I’m going to plant all my food plot.” For goodness sakes, don’t do that. If you want to try a new product, fantastic, try it. But if you’ve got something that’s working, what’s the old tail? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Okay, so if what you’re doing is working for you, try some of those new ones, but don’t turn your whole program over to a new product.
Mike Howell (11:33):
You know Bill, that sounds an awful lot like what we tell people in agriculture. Something new comes on the market, maybe try a little bit on your farm and see how it works for you, but don’t go hog wild that first year until you know how it’s going to work on your property with your situation.
Bill Maily (11:47):
Exactly. When I was a county agent we’d do something on a particular piece of property, when you and I were checking cotton you could do this on this piece of property and guess what? This piece of property over here, it won’t work. So each piece of property that you look at, each soil type that you deal with has to be handled separately.
Mike Howell (12:02):
Bill, you talked about managing the entire property and one thing that I was told years ago that we needed to fertilize some of the natural brows and one of the big plants that we have in our part of the world is honeysuckle. Deer love to eat that honeysuckle. But the person that told me this, and it wasn’t you by the way, but the person that told me this said to only fertilize half of that honeysuckle vine. And the reason for that was that the half that you fertilize would be so green and lush and the deer would eat it so much they would actually eat it to the ground and end up killing it if you fertilize the whole part. If you only needed to fertilize half of it you’d have some to come back for next year.
(12:35)
I don’t know if there’s any truth to that or not, but I guess my question is should we be fertilizing some of this natural brows out in the forest? Is that going to be beneficial or is there enough nutrients out there naturally to take care of that situation?
Bill Maily (12:46):
Well, let me tell you this, if there wasn’t enough nutrients to take care of that it wouldn’t be growing next year, but now we can enhance those levels. If you want to do that, you got money in the budget, I got no issues with that. Now this thing you just said about doing half of a vine, I got honeysuckle right back here. If we pull a vine, guess what it’s going to do? Be tied to every other vine that’s running on that ground. So point about fertilizing half of a bunch of honeysuckle, I’m not sure how we would do that. You’re actually doing it all. Try it, see how it works.
(13:17)
And you’re right, we have Japanese honeysuckle, I’ve put up a picture of a coral honeysuckle, which is our native honeysuckle, and nobody in the room knew what that was. They said, “What is that?” I said, “What is this?” And put up Japanese honeysuckle. They said, “That’s our native honeysuckle.” Nope, this is. When they’re introducing these new plants into the process we also need to consider this, why did those people not see native honeysuckle anymore from the competition of a plant that came in that’s called Japanese honeysuckle? So it’s overriding. It’s a great crop. Privet hedge is a great brow, but you better than have a way to control it because it’s going to take over. Try it on some plots and when you’re out there hunting, you’re just not out there to collect meat, I’m not. Half the time I don’t even load my gun. I’m watching what these deer are eating, what these turkeys are feeding on, and then you can better enhance that piece of property by knowing where those focal points are.
Mike Howell (14:05):
Bill, earlier in the program you mentioned that we need to be supplementing these animals year round, maybe not just in the fall. And I think that’s something a lot of hunters are missing out on, they only think about planting stuff in the fall. Let’s talk just a minute about the year long program. What do we need to be doing throughout the calendar year? How do we get started? When’s the right time to start, and things like that?
Bill Maily (14:24):
People would ask me in all my probes, when does management start on the deer? When that fawn hits the ground and you got to take that fawn through weening, maturing, growing those antlers or either producing fawns. It’s a year round program, it has to be looked at that way. But probably 85% of these properties that people have leased, they’re restricted on what they can do to start with. But if they’re not, then they hunt it, they hunt it, they hunt it. You know what? They come back like we was talking about early in August and put out their food plots and now it’s important again, but there’s something needs to be looked at and watched in any game animal management program. Something’s got to be happening at each year and each month of the year because early in the spring you’ve got those bucks that have been chasing does all winter, they’ve probably lost 30% of their body weight they’ve got to recoup.
(15:11)
That’s why God built this thing where everything starts flushing into spring, take care of the critters out there. And then as it matures, the [inaudible 00:15:19] then the quality of them starts going down. So that may be where we were talking about earlier, maybe supplementing some fertilizer and getting some more growth. We tried alfalfa one year on our property. First year they didn’t touch it. Second year one of them must have fell and got a mouthful, they gobbled it up. The third year they were eating it, then they quit. They called me. I went down and looked. Well, guess what? We had blister beetles all in there. So again, when you go to the food plot year round type program, somebody had got to look at it.
(15:46)
And then on your clovers a lot of them you need to look at the different ones and how you’re supposed to manage them because most of them are receding annuals, so when they get up there and those flowers turn brown and they start drying, we go on ours with the bush hog and raise the bush hog up, just cut the tops out, spread the seeds, it throws that plant back into vegetative growth and produces more biomass.
Mike Howell (16:08):
Well, Bill, we’ve touched on a lot of subjects today. You’ve given us a lot of things to think about about managing these food plots for the deer populations. How would you summarize all this up and what’s your take home message to our listeners?
Bill Maily (16:19):
Step by step, and make it fun. A lot of these guys go out, like you talking about the tractors on the trailers with the spreaders and the disc. Instead of trying to get all that work done in one weekend, spread it out. I do a program on attractive wildlife to your yard and it’s mainly for ladies and I said, “Big mistake we make. We want to get something done. We try to do every bit at the weekend and we get so dang gone mad and so sore we can’t enjoy it.” Space yourself out and enjoy it. It’s a fun program and seeing things improve from the work you did, to me is very, very, very rewarding.
Mike Howell (16:56):
Well Bill, we sure appreciate it. I do have one final question that I wanted to ask you about, and you kind of touched on it at the very beginning, talking about taking kids hunting and taking kids fishing. And I know for a long time you were a big part of the Catch-A-Dream Foundation. If you would, talk a little bit about that program and what all is involved in that program.
Bill Maily (17:14):
I’d be happy to. I’m still not on the board, but I’m still involved and I support them 100%. They do a great thing. It was set up to take kids on outdoor adventures, hunting and fishing, Make-A-Wish, quit doing it. They quit doing consumable type things like that, and they’re a great outfit too. So we focus on fishing and hunting and it’s for kids that have life-threatening conditions. And I think when I talk to Dr. Brunson, Marty Brunson is the executive director, I think last time I talked to him that started in 2000. I think there’s been like 4 or 500 kids have been on a trip. And it’s not a government program, it’s privately funded through companies, ag companies, wildlife, fisheries companies, sporting goods, it’s a lot of support.
(17:58)
Even though I’m not on the board, I run into situations like where there’s certain qualifications they have to meet 8 to 18 or something like that. Well, I took a guy fishing several weeks ago, he’s 42. The man’s dying. You think I’m going to tell him no? I said that, man, there’s a big man watching over my shoulder and I don’t want him mad at me. It is an amazing program. And those kids for two or three, sometimes four days, don’t think about medication, smells and hospitals and doctors in white coats and injections and pain. If we can give that to them, I’ll continue as long as the good Lord gives me the strength to continue.
Mike Howell (18:32):
Bill, that’s a great program and we appreciate everything that you’ve done for that over the years and hope you’re able to keep doing that for a long time. One thing I always wrap up this segment with is telling people that they can go to nutrien-ekonomics.com to find out more information about this. Now we have a lot of information out there about soil testing and the different nutrients, but I don’t think we have anything specifically about wildlife management out there.
(18:55)
So, Bill, I know you’ve got some great websites and places people can go to find out more information. Could you share a couple of places that somebody could go to get more information?
Bill Maily (19:04):
Best thing to do is go to the Mississippi State website and click on extension and then you’ll have a screen come down and click on wildlife fisheries and it’ll have every publication that’s been published. Then if you got questions, you can call Mike.
Mike Howell (19:19):
That sounds great. Anybody that calls, I can get them right back to you and we could make sure they get the answer they need.
(19:25)
Listeners, we want to thank you for tuning in to this segment. I hope that you can find something useful to help manage your dear herd this year.
(19:31)
Well listeners, as you know, is now time for our second segment of the program where we talk about somebody famous in agriculture.
(19:39)
This week I thought we would talk about Emil Truog. Emil was an American soil scientist. He received his BS degree from the University of Wisconsin in 1909 and a master’s in chemistry in 1912. Then he became an instructor in soil science at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He was later promoted to assistant professor and then full professor, and then he retired in 1954. He was also the chairman of the Department of Soil Science at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from 1939 to 1953. Much of his research during his early years at the university was focused on discovering the process by which plants obtain nutrients from the soil. With the help from colleagues and graduate students, he pioneered many of the practical soil tests. His research culminated into over 100 scientific papers, 3 books, and about 50 popular articles. Emil was a very well-known and admired teacher of graduate, undergraduate, and short core students. During his career, he guided over 100 students to their doctorate degree and almost as many to their masters.
(20:45)
Now, Emil grew up on a farm near Independence, Wisconsin. He was the youngest of 10 children. His parents were Swiss immigrants who came to America in 1850, and his father started off working as a carpenter in cities up and down the Mississippi River. Before he finally settled near Arcadia, Wisconsin. Emil went to high school at a one room schoolhouse that only offered two years of high school, and his physics teacher encouraged Emil to move to another high school where he could complete his high school education. Emil enrolled in Arcadia High School where he graduated as valedictorian in his class.
(21:20)
Now, long before Truog began his career as a professor and soil scientist at the University of Wisconsin Madison. It was known that some soils were not as productive as others because of the pH level. The pH affected the amount of available nutrients in the soil for the plants to utilise, and the soil acidity could be corrected with the application of lime. The problem at the time was that farmers did not know how acidic their soils were, as well as not knowing how much lime it would take to correct the problem. Truog’s main goal was to develop an easy and practical test that all farmers could use to amend their soils. In 1912 he developed a test that is still the basis of the acidity test we use today. In the simplest form this test combines soil, water, and some chemicals placed in a flask and brought to a boil, and then a piece of litmus paper is soaked in that and you compare the color with a known acidity level chart.
(22:11)
In the late 1830s Truog began to work on a test to determine the amount of nitrogen in a soil that would become available during the growing season to a plant. At the time, this was mostly an academic question. However, farmers were putting more thought into what was actually in the soil and how the plants interacted with it. Emil talked with Emil Jorgensen also at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who has served as extension division director and got excited. They started a campaign to help the farmers get up to 100 bushels per acre yield in their corn. This was called the 100 Bushel Corn Advantage. At this time, Truog had perfected his 10 year old nitrogen availability test. Truog’s test more closely approximates the interaction of the bacteria and nitrogen throughout the growing season. The test was quite simple and caused for minimum equipment. A lab worker measures a quarter teaspoon of soil to be tested. He puts this into a boiling flask with some other chemicals. The mixture is boiled and the chemicals liberate a portion of the nitrogen. The tube of soil and chemicals can be compared to the color of tubes with known concentrations to determine the amount of nitrogen availability.
(23:18)
Now, Emil figured that the farmers would need about 150 pounds of nitrogen to produce 100 bushels of corn. Using this test and 100 Bushel Corn Advantage campaign, Emil tested 162 farmer soils and wrote prescriptions for the addition of nitrogen to each of them. Other suggestions were made to farmers, including additions of phosphorus and potassium. Due to the farmer’s large success, the name was later changed to the 100 Bushel Corn Adventure. Due to the success of this program, the name was changed from the 100 Bushel Corn Adventure to the Pacemaker Corn Club. Despite the fact that the forecast for the corn in the country in 1952 was only 39.4 bushels per acre, the Wisconsin average was 58.5 bushels. Now the average for the 162 farms that Emil tested was 124 bushels, over three times the national average. So we want to give a big thanks to Emil Truog and all his work he did to develop soil testing back in the early 1900s.
(24:17)
Listeners, I want to thank you for tuning in today. I want to remind you for more information on this and any other topics we’ve talked about you can go to nutrien-ekonomics.com. Until next time, this has been Mike Howell with The Dirt.
