I was wondering if any of y'all have found feeding cotton seed as protein for their deer?? I have been hearing a lot of people going that direction. You can buy in bulk for about $200 per ton. Also hear that it has over 30% protein.. Any of y'all out in the hill country feeding????

Here is a video and article that I created on the subject. http://www.deergeartv.com/wlm-blog/pro-s-con-s-of-cottonseed.html

Thank you for the info!!!! The hunters on my lease really enjoyed and lots of good info!

For those of you that feed it have you noticed if bucks are drawn to it to post rut like traditional protein? Also do you think they prefer one over the other...Traditional protein vs Cottonseed?

If you feed cottonseed you should still also be feeding protein so the deer get minerals that cottonseed lacks. You would want to feed cotton seed from the middle/end of January-July/August to allow bucks the ability to pass on thier genes. Cottonseed can make bucks sterile.

Why are there two threads on this subject?

Gossypol toxicity when feeding whole cotton seed to deer is a real possibility.
Depending on intake it certainly can negatively effect reproductive ability in mature bucks.
Young / immature deer have a much lower tolerance to gossypol, in those 4 months or less it can result in life long problems or in cases of consumption of 20% of their diet or more sudden death.

It is hard to tell how much is too much, but hungry/starving deer on below average to poor range conditions will consume harmful levels.

If they spend as much or more time eating WCS as they do at a protein feeder with decent quality deer protein in it, that is indication of too much WCS.
Deer on good range conditions or supplemented with free choice pellet specifically designed for deer usually don’t eat enough to be a concern.

All young/immature ruminants have a low tolerance to gossypol.

If there are livestock on the property it must be fenced off from their access.
There are reasons WCS / cotton seed meal is limited to certain maximum levels in livestock feed.

Humans trying to do good things for wildlife inadvertently do a lot of damage in attempt to save money.

Nothing is more beneficial and as safe & researched as a quality protein specifically formulated for deer.

The farmer that leases our cultivated land, stockpiles the burrs across the road from our place. It is basically the trash from the ginning process, it also includes some seed, we will see deer at the dump location. No telling what else is in that "trash", but the deer seem to know what is good and what to not eat.

We used to feed cotton seed, but haven't in several years. Used the same type wire barrels in the above pics, some years it would be gone faster than you could fill them, other years the cotton seed would sit there and literally rot inside of the wire.

Thanks for the links you have posted.