Grazy Posted February 5, 2017 Report Share Posted February 5, 2017 Hi. We have a small DIY shoot and put around 650 birds down but we have trouble holding them and with no other shoots in the local area, we lose nearly 3/4 of them. I've heard of people adding aniseed to the feed to feed to help hold the birds, does anyone have any experience of this? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Walker570 Posted February 5, 2017 Report Share Posted February 5, 2017 You used to be able to get special holding mixes. I have also used the blocks as well but protection from deer and badgers is essential for those. Assume these are all still available. A feeder every 10 or 15 yrds also helps in a circle back to the start, they then tend to move feeder to feeder and finish up back home. Tried all sorts of crazy ideas over the years as most of the shoots I have run have not had someone on the ground every day, all day to dog in. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scotslad Posted February 5, 2017 Report Share Posted February 5, 2017 Some people swear by it and claim it is the miracle solution, yet other very good keepers don't use it. If it was as good as some claim everyone would use it. Best way is just to try it urself, it's not dear. I tried it on our shoot a few years ago as an experiment but only filling half the hoppers so birds had a choice, didn't really make any difference, sometimes the aineseed hopper would empty 1st other times the straight wheat. I still use it a bit but not really convinced by it. I'd always reccommend using decent quailty wheat as a basic, many keepers are now adding maize which seems to hold them althou gets them fat. I've tried some of the mixd seed/feed mixes (think its marsdens make them, Hold em i think there called) make more sense to me but hand feed main drives on straw with them and didn't make a massive difference. My next plan is to try and make some feed blocks (but struggling to find large quantites of suet/dripping) birds esp partridges seemed to like them but got quite dear. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Blackpowder Posted February 5, 2017 Report Share Posted February 5, 2017 Holding pheasants on all diy shoots is never easy, especially in mild winters as we have been experiencing over the past few years. Aniseed is worth a try so are straw rides and a circle of feeders. After the heavy snow fall of 2010 or 2011 the syndicate where I was a member had a bag of 99 pheasants on the first shoot in the New Year. In contrast the last shoot there in 2017 resulted in 4 pheasants. The only thing to do is to keep trying different methods and strategies, plenty good advice on this forum from professionals. Good luck with it. Blackpowder Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Konnie Posted February 5, 2017 Report Share Posted February 5, 2017 Look at your covers, or if you have woods them, In my opinion a good habitat that the birds like will help the most, Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grazy Posted February 5, 2017 Author Report Share Posted February 5, 2017 Thanks all for the responses. This year wasn't great as the wheat we had delivered was very poor quality. I'll try some aniseed but also the maize. We are also reviewing where the feeders are across the drives. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Outlander Posted February 5, 2017 Report Share Posted February 5, 2017 Aniseed only seemed to attract badgers and deer on our little diy , but a bit of cracked maize over a straw ride did the job of holding the birds well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scotslad Posted February 5, 2017 Report Share Posted February 5, 2017 The other thing i'd possibly think of is reducing ur bird numbers, no point spending cash releasing extra birds if ur not holding them. But the past 2 seasons have been hard to hold birds on some shoots, know of 1 shoot who abonded 1 whole beat after 2 days as no birds and they put 10's of thousands down on that beat Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
subsonicnat Posted February 5, 2017 Report Share Posted February 5, 2017 Dogging in on a very regular basis Im afraid,boils down to graft like all keepering.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Scotland Posted February 21, 2017 Report Share Posted February 21, 2017 We used it on our shoot for one year only we had sheep at every feeder we put it on straw in woods and on checking the badger droppings it was full of wheat we stopped using it and the last two years have been sheep free Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tiny tim Posted March 5, 2017 Report Share Posted March 5, 2017 Split maize works for us Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Scotland Posted March 17, 2017 Report Share Posted March 17, 2017 How do you use your split maize ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Outlander Posted March 23, 2017 Report Share Posted March 23, 2017 We just mixed it with the wheat in all our feeders and hand scattered some on straw. Seemed to keep them interested. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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