Midwestern Wildlife Zone – The Beginning
A little over 10 years ago, CISCO Seeds started the Midwestern Wildlife Zone line of products with a couple of mixes. Since then, we’ve kept adding until we reached our current 10 mixes. All we had at our disposal were some on-farm and food plot testimonials, so we determined we needed some in-field research to advance the line.
In 2021 we took a giant leap forward with this line. We added 38 new straight ingredients and great-looking new packaging in the small, color-coded MWZ bags (Red = Perennial; Yellow = Annual).
Plot Work Begins
In the Spring of 2022, I planted all of the clover varieties that we use, plus a couple of common varieties for comparison. I put exclusion cages in all of the plots to see what the wildlife preferred and get an idea of how much tonnage each variety produces. I like to talk about “outside the cage”—which tells us what the animals eat first and most—and “inside the cage”—which tells us how much yield or tonnage each variety produces.
The combination of those helps us decide persistence and desirability in a mix.
I aimed to see more results like this from an older grazing dairy plot I did years ago. Do the wildlife like the improved varieties better? Do the improved varieties last longer?
Year 1 told me that deer and turkey LOVE Frosty Berseem Clover! You can see in this November picture that the Frosty was almost 16 inches tall inside the cage and just a couple inches tall outside the cage.
Berseem is an annual clover so it will be gone next year but it is worth it to have it in the mix for the first year to get the deer onto your property and away from your neighbor’s!
Year 1 also told me that wildlife LOVE Bearcat Medium Red Clover. This perennial has been the plot favorite every year (including 2024) and has been producing about 3-4 times as much tonnage as the more commonly used perennial white ladino clovers.
Based on these results, we have upped the percentage of Bearcat in our TNT mix and have also added it to our Dry Ground Greens mix for 2025.
Bearcat showed excellent drought tolerance in the Fall of 2022 and Spring of 2023.
I planted Endure Forage Chicory in a 10-foot wide strip across the back of all of the clover plots and it has done fantastic; it is still going strong going into year 4.
You can see a difference in plot height where the deer graze the chicory over just the straight clover – except in the Bearcat plot, which they keep chewed down whether there is chicory present or not!
Plots Added 2023-2024
In 2023 I planted 3 new plots in early May (see above) – our old TNT formulation, a top competitor clover, and our new TNT Formulation. It was crazy dry in the Spring and none of the plots looked very good, but by the Fall they had filled in pretty well but were pretty weedy. I mowed a couple of times to keep the weeds from producing seed heads.
Plot Favorite 2023-2024
Year 2 and 3 also told me that wildlife LOVE Bearcat medium red clover. This is a perennial that has been the plot favorite every year. It is producing about 3-4 times as much tonnage as the more commonly used white ladino clovers – and even though it gets beaten to the ground every year, it keeps coming back strong!
Persistence of Bearcat Medium Red Clover
After 3 full years of being beaten down and chewed to the ground the Bearcat still looks like it will have a good stand for a 4th year – even through a pretty healthy invasion of crabgrass. The common medium red clover on the right above (probably an improved older variety) did not get eaten quite as hard, but there is virtually zero clover left in that plot.
Results from Mix Changes 2023-2024
This is a top competitor next to our new TNT. It was planted Spring of 2023 and the picture is late Summer/ Fall of 2024 – so the annual Berseem clover from both mixes is long gone, killed in the Winter of 23. You can see there is plenty of clover forage left.
They are both great stands but if you look at my notebook you can see that “outside the cage” our TNT is several inches shorter than the most famous, and still one of the best, clover mixes on the market. And the more obvious benefit from our new TNT blend is “inside the cage” where you can see ours is 26 inches tall and theirs is about 8 inches tall.
That means we are producing probably 3 times as much forage and the deer prefer it as well. Notice the difference in the amount of white blossoms as well. They are eating the TNT first. Our old TNT formulation is just to the left of the competitor’s and it looks almost identical to the competitor’s, a little higher outside the cage – but nothing compared to the new TNT.
Results from Mix Changes 2024
The two pictures above show the same top competitor but these plots were planted in May of 2024 and the picture is from August of 2024, so the annual berseem clover in both mixes is still there and doing great.
You can see that the TNT is producing a lot more forage inside the cage – and it’s hard to see in these pictures – but the TNT is at least 2-3 inches shorter outside the cage.
And if you look closely you can see that there are almost zero blossoms in the TNT, but the competitor’s mix is loaded with white blossoms. The deer like the TNT a lot better and eat it first.
If a hunter planted these side by side without the cage he would probably think the TNT was not producing as much because it’s shorter, but the cage is so important to knowing the whole story.
Other Things Learned in 2024
This Egyptian Wheat was planted in June of 2024. In the picture from September of 2024, you can see that it went down pretty flat after a moderate thunderstorm and a little wind. It did make a pretty good comeback but our MWZ Deer Blind with 4 different heights of sorghum (including Egyptian wheat) will stand up much stronger into the Fall and Winter.
Game Mix
The MWZ Game Mix was the only wildlife mix CISCO had when I started 20 years ago and the only mix I had no hand in creating. So I planted a 50’x50’ block in June of 2024 and I was impressed! There were a bunch of animals using that little block, from rabbits to an actual pheasant! We don’t see many pheasants up here (Mason, Michigan) anymore and the turkey and tweety birds hung out there also! It’s a great bird habitat and produces a ton of food throughout the Summer/Fall and into Winter.
Brassica Plot
I planted a brassica plot in early August with 7 straight varieties and 2 mixes – our MWZ Frozen Forage and a competitor. I got excellent emergence with most of the varieties out of the ground within 3 days.
I ran out of exclusion cages so I ran an electric fence down the length of the plot about 6 feet wide. I used a 19-year-old Patriot Solar fencer and set up a game camera to see how it worked. The turkeys were not too concerned about it. And that is where the 2 pictures at the beginning of this presentation came from!
You can see that the brassicas grew like crazy and that the electric exclusion cage/fence did its job quite well – with the radish inside the cage about 8 inches taller than outside the cage. I learned a lot about which varieties the wildlife like the earliest and latest – and the MWZ Frozen Forage was the best item in the plot for tonnage and persistence into the hunting season – even though we have way too many deer on this piece of land!
Switchgrass Plot
I planted a switchgrass plot in June of 2022 with 4 varieties: Cave in Rock, Nebraska 28, Dacotah, and the most expensive competitor’s brand. The pictures above are from 2024.
In the left picture, the competitor variety is almost a total failure after 2 years. Everything in that plot is foxtail and crabgrass except for a few sprigs just to the right of my fencepost. The Cave in Rock in the right picture looks very nice, almost 7 feet tall and thick, the Nebraska 28 in the plot (plus about 14 more acres on the property) also looks great, a little over 6 feet tall and thick. The Dacotah is a short variety and looks “so so,” about 3.5 feet tall and not quite as thick as I would like – but way better than the high-dollar stuff.
Habitat Layout – Switchgrass 17 acres 2024
I planted over 2.5 acres of winding clover paths in late 2021. I then planted the 16 or 17 acres of Nebraska 28 switchgrass in 3 plantings in 2022: 7 acres in late May, 6 acres in early August, and about 5 acres in November (the 30th – a dormant seeding. Nothing came up in 2022! Nothing!
I had to mow the Spring-seeded part four times to keep weeds from producing seed heads and mowed the Fall-planted once. Now less than 2 years later most of those 16 acres look like the pictures above. Don’t give up on switchgrass. The deer use the clover trails a lot but as you can see in the right picture they will also make their own trails!
Equipment
Equipment is important! This is how we planted 16 acres of switchgrass in 2022! Notice the “OSHA-approved” safety strap! This setup was hard to calibrate. But we did get a nice stand with only one little skip!
This December I had the landowner buy one of our new Hooeyman broadcast spreaders for his side-by-side because his hired help (ME) was getting too old to carry and spread fertilizer and seed on his back – or from the back of the side-by-side for 30 acres!
In December, I spread potash (0-0-60) on all the clover paths and clover plots. The spreader worked wonderfully.
I am getting one of the smaller, electric belly spreaders to do the small seed plots before Spring. This big one runs from the side-by-side battery and the belly spreader uses an electric drill-type battery.
I tried to get CISCO to spring for the tractor on the left! But I had to settle for the landowner to get the D-17 on the right. At least it’s an Allis!
Results
On my first day out with my new crossbow, this guy visited me! I let him go hoping to see him again next year.
I saw him after gun season ended, so hopefully he sticks around; we have plenty of acreage, food, and habitat to keep him home. In the background, you can see a group of does nibbling in the MWZ Brassica plot, some on both sides of the electric exclusion cage/fence.
Plans
This Spring I plan on planting replicated plots of our Wildlife Zone TNT Mix and our New Dry Ground Greens formulation in head-to-head trials with the top 4 competitors that I run into in our region.
A couple of these companies espouse using all raw seed, no “wasteful” coating, no cheap annual “fillers” – and one of them uses half annual clover and everything is 34% coated! Stay tuned to see what they all look like in the field!!
Article posted by Brian Haynes.
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