I’m thinking about putting up a feed pen around my deer feeder that would be roughly 100 feet by 100 feet and planting a food plot inside the pen with deer feeder. We run cows on the place and there’s really no great way to fence out a couple of acres for a dedicated food plot without sacrificing grazing country. This would be in Leon county on the edge of heavy woods.

Is a 100x100 food plot enough to mess with? The idea is to have more than just corn for them to come to and eat during the fall and winter, not necessarily to give them a year round food source to hold them on the place.


Any thoughts are appreciated

Interesting thought, that is about a 1/4 acre, would also be relatively easy to add gravity fed protein feeders and more acreage as needed. If that is too small, what is the minimum to be "effective"? We run into the same issue as there is not always a cost effective way to cross fence when you have a lot of elevation changes and creeks.

Putting a bag of oats in the feeder will get you a little green grazing around the feeder. Usually sprouts after a rain in my experience.

Don’t think it will grow enough to do anything, too much traffic.

Agreed. We tried it in Mason county. Way too much traffic. What little bit that did sprout was gone immediately

Not enough room to make any kind of difference at all. 1/2 of your pen is already trampled down from just deer feeding
on the corn.

if you get rain, I think you should do fine. my small place in central TX I typically plant 5-6 small plots, most have a feeder associated with them. The largest might be 100x100 with the others about 60-80 by 100-120. It takes a couple of weeks following a rain and the deer will keep it nipped off pretty short but there are spots where it will get 6-8 inches tall. These are all unpenned as I don't have any livestock on the place, but various years, the hogs will root up portions at various times throughout the growing season.

the total acreage is probably around 2.25 and I usually put out about 200 lbs oats and then split 20-30 lbs of peas, wheat, turnip, plus a few others tossed in.

our east TX place, we have planted mainly oats but also did one plot with wheat a few years ago. all these were ~60-100' wide by 200-300' long, long strips along tree lines to try to draw the deer out of the dense undergrowth.

what is your soil type?

Good points about foot traffic being a hurdle.

I was thinking of putting the feeder towards one end of the pen to minimize foot traffic as much as possible, I could make it longer over time, however I’m building it out of hog or cattle panels to prevent hogs from getting into it every year I could make it 50-100 feet longer just can’t do it all up front. Also won’t be able to go much wider due to peer lines in the area. So this year could be 100x100 next year 100x200 and I have plenty of room to make it a little longer every year eventually could be upwards of 150 yards long. Just trying to get a starting point.

Soil type is sandy loam with spots of clay mixed in.

I was thinking planting heavy of the oats and mixing in some kind of peas.

I've had cattle on all of my leases and ended up growing wheat on the outside of my feeder pen in an area that the deer kept mowed down. I think I read somewhere that cows have a hard time eating wheat or anything else if isn't high enough off the ground, so they left it alone for the most part. It wasn't a giant food plot so maybe that kept the cows away too but I was surprised by the lack of cattle or droppings I saw from them when hunting.

I think you have a great idea as that is exactly what I had. I planted beans and corn. The deer let them get a little growth and in one night they ate all the beans..they love beans. I also had three feeders in the pen which worked great. I had as much as 18 bucks in the pen at one time. I would go to the lease every couple of days as it was close and throw out about 15 lb.s of corn each time. I had so much traffic I could put out 50 lb.s of corn and it would all be eaten over night. You will not ever regret building a pen.

IMO, 0.22 acres is too small to mess with, provided you have many deer at all they will keep oats mowed down to the ground (if they don't kill them) and any peas that sprout as soon as they put on a leaf it will be gone and the plant will die. We plant 11 acres on an 800 acre lease and its still not enough. We plant 100/lbs per acre of oats and unless we have a ton of rain the deer keep it mowed down to just an inch or two. Our exclusioin cages have shown without the deer grazing the oats would be as much as 12" or more tall. The last few years we've taken approximately 35-40 deer a year and it hasn't seemed to make much difference in the herd size. Our first two spot light survey's this year were lower than last year so maybe we're making a dent.