A duck hunters guide to farming for ducks

Farming for ducks. The name implies that you're raising ducks, or waterfowl, from hatching eggs to full fledged adults. That's not what I'm talking about though. I'm talking about growing crops and farming to attract ducks and geese in the fall. This has become a hotly debated issue among waterfowlers. But that's a whole blog in and of itself. This post is about what to grow to attract ducks to your favorite spot this fall. Understand this, I'm NOT a waterfowl biologist. I'm a veteran duck hunter with over 30 years of experience. I've been a farmer for only 5 years now, but I've learned a few things about what really attracts ducks.

There are basically 2 types of foods that duck hunters should focus on for attracting waterfowl: crops and moist soil units (msu's) or wetland grasses. Both have their place in the overall management scheme for duck hunting spots.

MSU's or Moist Soil Units. I won't get too heavily into the msu's, but suffice it to say, they are a tremendous source of valuable food for waterfowl. And they're basically free to grow. The seeds are already in the soil bank, you just have to 'promote them' to grow. This is usually very easily done with the proper timing of water release from your favorite msu. In our case, at Mallard Farms, we like to start slowly letting water off our msu's in late May to early June. This always produces a fantastic stand of barnyard grass (basically a wild millet similar to Japanese millet), smartweed (both nodding & Pennsylvania), and yellow nutsedge for us. This results in a great msu that attracts a lot of early season birds.

There are many different crops that can be grown for waterfowl: corn, buckwheat, barley, rice, milo, various millets, soybeans, and even sunflowers to name a few. But I want to focus on corn, buckwheat and the millets (rice would be another crop to focus on in the southern states). These have been our best producers by far for overall duck numbers and hunting success.

Buckwheat: This plant is actually considered a weed to some farmers in the upper Midwest. It's used a lot in the making of flour. Waterfowl, deer and turkey are very attracted to this crop. But we've found that ducks absolutely LOVE this crop after a hard freeze! Buckwheat is relatively easy to grow. We've had our best success in west central Missouri by planting in late July to early August. Our planting method of choice is drilling at about 1/2" - 3/4" deep. You can also broadcast it onto a prepared seedbed, but be sure and either drag a harrow over it and run a cultipacker over it to get good seed to soil contact. Our buckwheat usually gets about 2' - 3' tall, so we try to flood it about 1' deep. However, we've found that the shallower areas (6" deep or less) are preferred by waterfowl. Here's a video taken on one of our buckwheat fields:

Mallard Farms Duck Club - Buckwheat Field from Chandler Daggett on Vimeo.

Millets: We've planted browntop, proso, and Japanese millet. The proso millet really attracted a lot of mallards the first year we used it. We use the same planting methods on all of the millets as we do with buckwheat - drilled at about 1/2" - 3/4" deep in late July - early August. We try to flood it about 6" deep because, again, mallards, pintails and teal (dabbling ducks in general) prefer that shallow depth. The browntop millet wasn't really a big success. The Japanese millet is a great attractor for early season ducks and we plant some every year. But it's also a big attractor to black birds and they're really hard it before the ducks arrive. However, Japanese millet is great about volunteering, so it's perfect for ditches and other low lying areas. Because after it volunteers the following year it can be manipulated.

Corn: Corn is King! Bar none! But, it's also VERY EXPENSIVE to plant and maintain. We have a real working farm and we grow several hundred acres of corn each year. If you're going to plant corn 'the right way', you really need access to a planter. Corn grows best when it's planted about 2" deep plus or minus a 1/2" (depending on soil conditions). And corn is a very large user of Nitrogen. We use round-up ready corn so that we can spray generic glyphosate on it to take care of the weeds--weeds are also extremely large user of, and extremely efficient users of Nitrogen! If you don't get a handle on your weeds early, they'll kill your corn yields. Here in our part of MO we start planting corn around tax day, April 15th. But with the wet springs we've had lately we've planted some of our 'duck corn' in late June - early July. But earlier is better so it's not tasseling in the hottest part of the summer. Then we try and flood it no more than 1' deep. Contrary to what a lot of hunters say, we don't want the water up to the ears (or about 2.5' - 3' deep). In our experience, once again, shallower is better. We've witnessed too many thousands of ducks fly into, and knock down, corn stalks that are in inches deep water. Below are just a few of the many vidoes we've got of ducks in corn:

Mallard Farms Duck Club - CRP Lake from Chandler Daggett on Vimeo.

Mallard Farms Duck Club - 3 Banded Swans from Chandler Daggett on Vimeo.

Mallard Farms Duck Club - Roach Field from Chandler Daggett on Vimeo.

Mallard Farms Duck Club- 2007 from Chandler Daggett on Vimeo.

The bottom line? Get out there and get some food planted for the ducks. You won't be sorry when waterfowl season rolls around in the fall.

American Land Company