Providing good habitat is the key to managing for bobwhite quail, but providing high quality seeds through fallow disking and food plots can be an important component of an comprehensive management program.
Bobwhite quail will use a variety of small grain plots, annual lespedezas and fields comprised of early early successional plant species. Remember that although food plots for quail are great, management for bobwhites should always give priority to the establishment and maintenance of native habitat.
In general, food plots for quail should not be nearly as large as those planted for hunting mourning and whitewing doves. Actually, bobwhite require that all of their habitat needs be filled in relatively close proximity. As a result, bobwhite quail are often associated with habitat edges. The best food plots for quail should be long and narrow, such as along a field border situated close to cover such as brushy thickets, fence rows or even hedgerows.
Wildlife use of a food plot is often times based on location, and site selection is especially important with quail. In general, a good food plot location would be adjacent to both a fallow field and a row crop field, where birds would almost certainly be traveling. The location would be further improved if the food plot’s location was in close proximity to a hedgerow or other brushy cover.
A native food plot can be established through habitat management practices. Native food plots for quail are those chock-full of what many landowners would refer to as “weeds.” Beneficial weeds for bobwhite quail include ragweed, partridge pea, native lespedezas, milk pea, butterfly pea, morning glories, blackberry (dewberry) smartweeds, pokeberry, and Illinois bundleflower. These native food plot plants are not only important for bobwhite food, but they also usually provide good overhead cover as well.
To promote these native plants such as the ones listed above, landowners should disk strips or small blocks adjacent to field borders during late winter. This habitat management practice disturbs the soil and encourages seed located in the soil to germinate. Disked areas can also serve as firebreaks during the winter for prescribed buring. Burning, by the way, on and two to four year cycle is probably the best way to manage for the early successional plants favored by many wildlife species, including bobwhite quail, turkey, and white-tailed deer.
I should also mention that quail often benefit from mixes that contain cowpeas and soybeans, but areas with a high density of whitetail deer will not allow these plants to produce seed for quail to eat. In short, if you want to a food plot for quail and you also have a lot of deer, do not plant cowpeas or soybeans. Also, do not plant grasses such as tall fescue, timothy, orchardgrass, bromegrasses, bluegrass, or King Ranch bluestem. These species can be detrimental to bobwhites and other wildlife species because they displace good nesting and brood-rearing habitat and they limit the movement of quail in general, quail chicks in specific.
Food Plot Mixes for Quail
Food is usually not the limiting factor for quail populations, but it never hurts to have more than enough food on a property. Now that you have a good idea of the foods that quail need, here are some ideas for food plots for quail. First, lets look at an annual cool season (winter) food plot mix. Since this is a mixture of annuals, it will have to be replanted each fall. This mixture works as food plots for doves and also those serving as firebreaks.
Winter (Cool Season) Annual Food Plot Mix
- 5 pounds of crimson clover
- 20 pounds of Austrian winter peas
- 50 pounds of wheat
Winter Annual Food Plot Mix
- 5 pounds of Egyptian wheat
- 5 pounds of milo (grain sorghum)
- 7 pounds of white proso millet
- 7 pounds of browntop millet
Spring (Warm Season) Annual Food Plot Mix
- 2 pounds of partridge pea
- 15 pounds of Kobe/Korean lespedeza
Spring Annual Food Plot Forb-Grass Mix
- 5 pounds of browntop millet
- 5 pounds of milo (grain sorghum)
- 10 pounds of buckwheat (where applicable)
- 15 pounds of iron-clay cowpeas
- 20 pounds of soybeans
These food plots will work just about anywhere you find bobwhite quail. By the way, bobwhite love the seeds produced by Kobe/Korean lespedezas, which are available to birds throughout the winter. Because of this, the lespedeza food plot seed mixture will be loaded with quail from December through February. If you are managing for quail, the first priority should always be to provide good quail habitat. Without good habitat and proper habitat management, food plots for quail will not make a noticeable difference.
I have bobwhites, blue scaled quail which I hatched and have them in a 16X24 ft fiberglass greenhouse that has a 16X24 ft screen pen that is connected. I feed them the lawn grass when I start mowing, but I need to add some of the seed plantings you have listed for a better variety. I think a small food plot would provide the quail more natural cover as well as seeds to eat.
Barbara, I would suggest developing the food plot next to your facility so that you can screen it after it has started growing. It will provide more forage area for your quail and eventually will seed out, providing them with additional seeds and an abundance of feed. They will like it!
Kobe lespedeza is invasive and can crowd out native species that bobwhite quail prefer, like sensitive pea, partridge pea, etc. To make matters worse, Kobe lespedeza is too thick for young bobwhites to walk through. We have created 18 acres of bird and pollinator habitat on our farm. Our biggest challenge is invasive common lespedeza. Kobe is one form of invasive common lespedeza from Asia.
The Bobwhite experts have recommended that we kill everything in the areas that have invasive lespedeza under the wildflowers, partridge pea, sensitive pea. They have recommended that we plant grain as a smother crop to fight the lespedeza and then try to start over with native wildflowers in legumes in a few years. Kobe lespedeza is one of the worst things you can plant, if you care about bobwhite quail.
Overton, thank you for sharing your experience with Kobe Lespedeza. It’s always much preferred to use native plants when managing for native wildlife. Quail are susceptible to vegetation that’s too thick to travel through. It sounds like you received some good advice from your local contact/s, and you have offered some good advice to land managers trying to improve their property for quail. Again, thanks and hopefully this will help others with their quail food plots and habitat endeavors.
If you want to plant a food plot for bobwhite quail, I want to second the advice above that you plant it next to brushy escape cover. What bobwhite quail need is nesting cover (native grasses) within 70 feet of brushy escape cover and brooding cover within 70 feet of brushy escape cover. Your food plot could just be a place that adult bobwhites visit to eat some yummy things, or it might be good brooding cover. (If you want good brooding cover, you will want to leave out the Kobe lespedeza. It appears to be too thick for bobwhite chicks to walk through and is very invasive, so it could mess up existing brood cover nearby.) It seems to me that the main point is that you don’t want your food plot to be a place where bobwhites go to get eaten by hawks. So, if you can’t put your food plot next to existing brushy escape cover, I would suggest that you grow the escape cover four years before planting the food plot around it or next to it. The idea is to have the escape cover in blocks that are at least 30 feet by 50 feet and to make sure all of your food plot is withing 70 feet of one or two blocks of escape cover. I am in Virginia, and here, the easiest escape cover to grow is amorpha fruticosa (indigo bush or river locust). You can plant the seedlings four feet apart and prune them or mow them almost to the ground the first three years. That way, they will form a tight brushy thicket instead of getting tall. Deer won’t eat them. They drop seeds gradually all winter and the seeds are very high in protein. Other good escape cover choices are blackberries and silky dogwood. Here in the east, sometimes you can put down one layer of brush and let the birds plant the blackberries. As mentioned above, food is not usually the limiting factor. Where I live in Virginia, it appears that escape cover is the most limiting factor and brooding cover second. A lot of places here have plenty of broomsedge or little bluestem for nesting cover. One of our problems here is that a lot of land that looks like bobwhite habitat actually has fescue underneath that is too thick for chicks. So, sometimes, killing fescue is the first priority. If escape cover, brooding cover and nesting cover are all present, I can see how a nice food plot could increase the local bobwhite population.
If you want to plant a food plot for bobwhite quail, I want to second the advice above that you plant it next to brushy escape cover. What bobwhite quail need is nesting cover (native grasses) within 70 feet of brushy escape cover and brooding cover within 70 feet of brushy escape cover. Your food plot could just be a place that adult bobwhites visit to eat some yummy things, or it might be good brooding cover. (If you want good brooding cover, you will want to leave out the Kobe lespedeza. It appears to be too thick for bobwhite chicks to walk through and is very invasive, so it could mess up existing brood cover nearby.) It seems to me that the main point is that you don’t want your food plot to be a place where bobwhites go to get eaten by hawks. So, if you can’t put your food plot next to existing brushy escape cover, I would suggest that you grow the escape cover four years before planting the food plot around it or next to it. The idea is to have the escape cover in blocks that are at least 30 feet by 50 feet and to make sure all of your food plot is withing 70 feet of one or two blocks of escape cover. I am in Virginia, and here, the easiest escape cover to grow is amorpha fruticosa (indigo bush or river locust). You can plant the seedlings four feet apart and prune them or mow them almost to the ground the first three years. That way, they will form a tight brushy thicket instead of getting tall. Deer won’t eat them. They drop seeds gradually all winter and the seeds are very high in protein. Other good escape cover choices are blackberries and silky dogwood. Here in the east, sometimes you can put down one layer of brush and let the birds plant the blackberries. As mentioned above, food is not usually the limiting factor. Where I live in Virginia, it appears that escape cover is the most limiting factor and brooding cover second. A lot of places here have plenty of broomsedge or little bluestem for nesting cover. One of our problems here is that a lot of land that looks like bobwhite habitat actually has fescue underneath that is too thick for chicks. So, sometimes, killing fescue is the first priority. If escape cover, brooding cover and nesting cover are all present, I can see how a nice food plot could increase the local bobwhite population.