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Hi all

 

We are hopefully aquiring a new bit of ground this year for a new patch of game cover. It is going to be situated behind an existing woodland drive and will be used for holding and blanking birds to and fro. Problem is its currently rape and I have not had to use late sown cover crops before. Anyone got any experience of utopia kale/rape hybrids, mustard mixes etc before because that's looking like the only option at the moment. I am guessing on an early August drilling once the rape is off so any experience or advice welcome.

 

 

Cheers

 

Chris

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Cheers guys that's the plan. We have got the luxury of being able to drill it so I think we will do that rather than broadcast it. I will have to have a bit of a mixture as it is going to be up to 8 acres!! A welcome addition I can tell you to a small shoot!

 

Cheers

 

Chris

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you'd be surprised with broadcasting how good a cover you can establish, if the crop is standing now you can even broadcast if from the sprayer and get it going a bit earlier, we've had up to 20 acre blocks simply because its gone onto land that was to be used for spring Barley. If you've any spring cropping you can gain effectively free cover and the farmer gets a form of "green manure" to plough in.

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no probs, we have had issues with the person applying said mustard putting it in too large blocks and it growing almost too well, simply means you have to run a topper over it where you don't want it :oops: Best results are to alternate tramlines or a similar idea so you have gaps of stubble in between hold partridges and pheasants very well if you have birds about. then you can also place feeders strategically we have done both using it as individual drives and blanking it into adjacent woods and driving from there. Shame I have no pictures of it when its well grown as small strips it will provide a cover not up to the usual game cover as it is no where near the height or thickness but it does provide enough to hold birds.

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  • 3 months later...

Remembered this thread when out at the weekend and this is what our mustard is like at the moment, simply broadcast onto stubble after harvest it has established well, we mostly have partridges released on this area but it draws pheasants from a fair distance which is good though possibly embarrassing bearing in mind the 100 odd of the neighbors birds that were in it at the weekend. Usually its high enough to hide foxes and will be by the time we shoot it, then gets ploughed in when the area goes into spring cropping. Basically makes it as cheap a cover crop as you can get and being a bit patchy everything seems to love it.

 

mustard1.jpg

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nope it usually does certainly into January. Being our partridge ground thats about all the time we need when it gets ploughed in so the ground has a bit of time to weather before spring drilling. Obviously it depends how thick and well you get it established but though it will look thinner it still stands up well most of the winter. I'll try and remember to update this as it goes but certainly its working well already and on stubble its pretty much free cover

Edited by al4x
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we have similar woods beech and ash with a load of sycamore very dark in the summer and winter no cover at all, the reason nothing grows on the floor is light and the only answer is to let light in. If you do its amazing how fast you get a decent bramble cover going. Planting anything under the canopy is a waste of time as it will be very slow to grow if it does at all.

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As teal says if its not growing anything over the summer in the wood then nothing will grow over the winter. The basics are a deciduous wood with little light has little cover in summer and even less in the winter. Cut some rides in let the light in and you will find brambles in the light patches within a year and a decent cover in year 2. Thats without planting anything the seeds will be there and the issue is purely light that is why you have a certain amount round the edges as the light can usually get in enough for stuff to grow. Once it gets colder and the leaves fall off everything stops growing so no cover is going to work if you broadcast seed about

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coming back to this thread this is the height the mustard was last week and its certainly working very well as a drive, first week we had 20 head from this drive and the second outing about the same. Bearing in mind its well away from our release wood and we have only put down 300 birds we have a return of over a third on two of the 4 days. Its that thick you can't see the dog in a fair bit of it.

 

28753_10151519232992786_1590690659_n.jpg

Edited by al4x
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