When it comes to maximizing antler size, no nutrient is as important as protein. And when it comes to providing lots of palatable, high protein forage for deer, Imperial PowerPlant produces more tonnage than any other competing product tested. To be sure your deer have all the protein they need to be as big and healthy as possible, and to help them grow the biggest racks, order your PowerPlant early. There are two reasons timing is critical.
The first is that the antler-growing window only last about 200 days. After bucks have recovered from the rigors of winter, they begin devoting substantial nutritional resources to antler growth, and when it comes to antler growth, the biggest nutritional player by far is protein. The emerging antler — that is, the velvet antler — is living tissue, and it is the fastest growing living tissue in the animal world. As such, it requires huge amounts of protein for its formation and growth. Realize, though, that bucks have only a finite window of time in which to grow their antlers. The antler-growing window varies slightly in different regions of North America, but in all areas it is of limited duration. In short, whatever antlers a buck is going to grow in a year will have to be grown during that window. And remember that spring and summer protein is not just important to bucks as they re-grow their antlers. It’s also extremely important for does as they complete their third trimester of pregnancy and later when they are producing milk for their newborn fawns. Doe milk is incredibly nutrient-dense, much more so than cow’s milk, and providing does with the palatable, abundant, high-protein forage that PowerPlant provides can help them increase milk volume.
Like all Imperial forage products, PowerPlant is designed to meet a specific and targeted need. PowerPlant is designed to produce as much tonnage of high-protein forage as possible.
One reason PowerPlant can outperform all other competing products tested is that it includes several varieties of forage beans and peas. These are true forage varieties. They are specifically designed to be used as a forage source, and not for agricultural bean or pea production. Is that distinction important? You bet.
These days, many of the plant varieties sold in the agriculture market have been engineered to do something specific. Agricultural soybean varieties, for example, are engineered to do one thing: grow the most beans per plant so bean farmers can get the highest yield. No plant can do everything well, though, and agriculture soybean plants that have been engineered toward maximizing bean production can fall somewhat short when the plants are used for forage, a role other than that for which they were designed. Many folks who have planted ag-variety soybeans as a deer forage know that ag soybeans can start to become stemmy and less palatable to deer as they mature and the lignen content in their stems increases. Also, ag soybeans don’t tolerate early grazing very well. This is also true of other ag-type plant varieties historically planted for deer, such as cow peas, which can often be wiped out by deer in only a week or two.
The soybean included in PowerPlant does not become stemmy, and it can also survive grazing much better than ag-type varieties. Unlike ag-soybean plants, which grow from one stem or trunk, the forage soybean in PowerPlant grows as a vine and puts its emphasis into producing abundant, tender, high-protein foliage that deer prefer. And once PowerPlant is established, its soybean component can keep going even after deer bite it off.
If you’re already familiar with PowerPlant, you might have already seen this (and if you’ll be planting PowerPlant for the first time this year, be sure to look for it). After your PowerPlant is up and going, you’ll likely see where the vines have been bitten off about deer-mouth level. If you check the same area of that plant a little later, you’ll likely see that a little knot where the deer bit the plant off, and several new “runners” growing from the knot. These runners keep growing and producing foliage.
To help PowerPlant keep producing at a high rate throughout spring and summer, the formula also includes small amounts of sunflowers and a high-quality wildlife sorghum. These structural plants act as a lattice for the vining forage plants to climb, helping them produce at a high rate and allow PowerPlant to grow into a thick green wall of forage that deer will use for food and cover.
To recap, protein is critical to antler development in bucks and does, which are pregnant during the same time and later lactating. That’s one reason you don’t want to wait too late to have your seedbed ready and your PowerPlant on hand. That’s so you can get it in the ground just as soon as soil temperatures in your area warm up to a constant 65 degrees. I said there are two reasons, timing is critical, though. Here’s the second one.
The second reason you shouldn’t wait to get your PowerPlant is that if you do, it might not be available later in the year. As good as the Whitetail Institute is at research, development and testing of nutritional products for deer, it is difficult however, to gauge the demand for PowerPlant.
Plus, the Whitetail Institute doesn’t carry PowerPlant over from one year to the next. The reason is that the Institute sells only the freshest seed in all of its forage products, and that includes PowerPlant. Beans and peas generally don’t remain of the highest quality for more than about a year in storage (although this life span can be stretched in some cases by deep-freezing them). That’s why the Whitetail Institute doesn’t produce PowerPlant year round.
As many food plotters unfortunately found out, the Institute ran out of PowerPlant early in each of the past three years because of sky-high demand. PowerPlant production has been increased again for 2010, but based on the demand for PowerPlant the past few years, it’s likely the Institute will run out again in 2010, so prudent field testers should order early.
Imperial Whitetail PowerPlant is available through many farm-supply stores. You can also order PowerPlant at http://www.whitetailinstitute.com/, or by calling (800) 688-3030. Either way, though, don’t wait too late!
