EastALHunter
Senior Member
Protein Feed vs Food Plots vs Native Browse
Over the years I have been asked many questions about providing nutrition to deer. Is protein feed worth the expense? How much nutrition is provided by native browse? Are food plots better than protein feed? How much better are food plots than native browse? Which is the best strategy? And the list goes on. To answer what is the best strategy, it takes a look at the actual nutritional numbers and then weigh those numbers against your property situation and your budget.
This technical document is written to cover native browse numbers in the Southern states not including Texas and Oklahoma which have a much different native browse scenario than the other Southern states and even between themselves. Midwest and Northern states have their own unique native browse characteristics with some being high quality and some less quality. I will say is this – Southern states have low quality native browse. Although total food intake per day varies, a good number to use is 10 lbs of total food intake per deer per day. Deer naturally gravitate toward the best food sources but they are browsers and we want to avoid overstating results. The numbers we are using are very conservative numbers. Here are the scenarios:
Scenario A – 10 lbs native browse
Scenario B – 3 lbs protein feed + 7 lbs native browse
Scenario C – 5 lbs food plot forage + 5 lbs native browse
Scenario D – 3 lbs protein feed + 5 lbs food plot forage + 2 lbs native browse
The objective is to maximize un-degraded protein content in the diet. If you haven’t read our technical document on protein quality please do so you can better understand why we focus on un-degraded protein. I will post that as well on here. To calculate the numbers we take crude (total) protein content multiplied by lbs of that food type (protein feed or native browse or food plot forage) and then multiply that result by the un-degraded protein content of that food type. Add the results for each food type and you have the total un-degraded lbs produced by that Scenario.
Native browse in the South averages 10% Crude Protein and 20% Un-degraded Protein. High quality red clover/chicory food plots have a Crude Protein of 25% with 40% Un-degraded Protein. For Protein Feed, we are going to use several alternatives so you can see the impact of the highest level feed, average feed, and low quality feed. The highest scoring feed by independent lab results is 28% Crude Protein with 72% Un-degraded Protein. Average feed runs 20% Crude Protein and 55% Un-degraded Protein. Low quality feed runs 16% Crude Protein and 40% Un-degraded Protein. Here are the lbs Un-degraded protein per deer per day results:
High Quality Avg Feed Low Quality
Scenario A 0.2 lbs
Scenario B 0.74 lbs 0.47 lbs 0.33 lbs
Scenario C 0.6 lbs
Scenario D 1.14 lbs 0.87 lbs 0.73 lbs
Those results may seem small but here is the % increase over native browse (Scenario A) for each option:
High Quality Avg Feed Low Quality
Scenario B 270% 135% 65%
Scenario C 200%
Scenario D 470% 335% 265%
These numbers bring up some interesting changes in our recommendations. Prior to independent lab testing for Un-degraded Protein content, we would recommend food plots as the proper first step in nutrition. However as you can see, the high quality feed at 28% crude protein and 72% Un-degraded content is the only option in Scenario B that beats Scenario C.
For years using common industry feed tables, we calculated the best feed on the market with protein content 21% and Un-degraded protein content at 40% which yielded 0.39 lbs so it was a no-brainer to recommend food plots first. Not anymore! However, the best scenario is protein feed + food plots obviously but some guys that lease timber company property who have no room for food plots or who don’t have the equipment to do food plots can still increase their protein performance up to 270%!!
Given that almost all of the protein feeds on the market fall in the average score category, its still better to plant quality perennial food plots if you have to make a choice between protein feeding an average feed versus planting unless you go with a high quality feed at 28% crude protein or higher. If you choose to feed a Low Quality feed you are really wasting your time and money. One other fun fact from these numbers is how much native browse would a deer have to eat to equal what food plots bring nutritionally? 30 lbs per day which is not possible. It’s close to 40 lbs versus a high quality feed!! These numbers debunk all of the previous theories against protein feeding effectiveness.
In summary, it is amazing to see the increase in nutritional quality by multiple strategies. However, you must be able to feed at an adequate level of 3 lbs per deer per day. In an average 500 acre area you should have about 25 deer in the South. That’s 75 lbs per day of protein feed for 5 months of feeding season or approximately 1 ton of protein feed for every 500 acres you want to feed.
Post if you have any questions or comments. Rude remarks are not welcome. Thanks for taking time to read.
