Superior Forage Mix is roughly a 50% grass / 50% legume mix created to combine forage quality & animal acceptance.
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This organic dairy farmer is looking to put up 5 cuttings of baleage this year.
Custom Dairy Forage Blend Off to a Good Start
The motive for the mix was high digestibility for dairy cattle. Traditionally, he would have seeded straight alfalfa, but the grass has helped increase his tonnage, and timely harvest has led to highly digestible fiber.
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New Deer Blind Mix Shines in 2025 Trial Plot
by Brian Haynes
The pictures below show our new Deer Blind Mix next to 2120 Forage Sorghum and Egyptian Wheat.
Midwestern Wildlife Zone Deer Blind Mix
Our Midwestern Wildlife Zone Deer Blind is an annual screen mix that can get as high as 15-18 feet tall. Hunters and wildlife enthusiasts use it to screen a food plot from the road or the neighbors - or to make a safe alley to get to their hunting stand, all the while being unnoticed by the wildlife. It is a mix of:
What’s in Deer Blind Mix?
Egyptian Wheat - a type of sorghum that can grow as high as 15-18 feet. However, you will see from the picture that it is thin-stalked and tends to blow over and lie flat!
2120 Forage Sorghum - a stout forage sorghum that grows up to 10-12 feet tall. It has sugarcane parentage, which allows it to stand long into the winter, and is harder to freeze.
I’ve formulated this to be 50% of the mix, so that it will help hold up the Egyptian Wheat.
CISCO SS340 Sorghum Sudangrass - a sorghum sudangrass cross that can grow 6-8 feet tall. It has a sturdy stalk to stand up strong.
Wilder Grain Sorghum - a grain sorghum that will get about 4 feet tall and has a very strong stalk.
Sunn Hemp - a quick-growing and fast-dying legume. I put this in the mix to help feed all these grasses some nitrogen and make a little color with their yellow flowers!
The Goal of this mix
All of these seeds together make an incredibly dense screen from the ground to the top.
There is some thought in the industry that grain sorghum and sunn hemp are food sources and that deer will knock the screen down.
However, my research shows that there is not enough in the mix to cause any issues. I have never had it get knocked down at all. You can plant this mix with confidence.
Please feel free to contact us with any questions on any of the Midwestern Wildlife Zone products.
What do the plots look like after a long, hard winter?
From the ground to the top, the heights were as follows:
New Deer Blind Mix - 4 ft 4 in
2120 Forage Sorghum - 2 ft 6 in
Old Deer Blind Mix - 2 ft
Egyptian Wheat - 10 in
In season heights were:
New Deer Blind Mix - 10-12 ft
2120 Forage Sorghum - 10 ft
Egyptian Wheat - 14-16 ft - but fell flat in early December
Old Deer Blind Mix - 10-12 ft - but really sparse
2025 Deer Plot Competition Update
by Brian Haynes
Update - 2025 Competition Plot
The pictures below show plots from 4 competitive companies in the deer plot world.
Also shown are our Midwestern Wildlife Zone (MWZ) TNT Mix and the new formulation of our Dry Ground Greens.
Competitor 1
A blend of clover; all raw seed (no seed coating) and no annuals. In this trial, it produced the least tonnage of the group and the deer are not hitting it very hard. It was slow to get out of the ground and has been the weediest of the observation plots.
Competitor 2
Also, a blend of clover; however, all the seed is coated, with half being annual and half perennial. This blend got out of the ground quicker and did a better job competing against weeds than Competitor 1, but it did not produce much more tonnage inside the cage.
MWZ TNT
Our clover mix is producing significantly more tonnage than any of the competitor mixes. It's all coated, got out of the ground quickly, and the deer are hitting it hard.
Competitor 3
A mix of chicory and clover. It produced only a little more tonnage than the Competitor 1 blend, but I noticed there is hardly any chicory in that mix.
Competitor 4
A mix of chicory and clover. It is the best of the competition; the chicory looks great, it is leafy and big. The deer are eating it well.
MWZ Dry Ground Greens (new formulation)
A mix of chicory and clover; the best-looking plot in the group, even out-producing our MWZ TNT by a little bit and producing significantly more tonnage than the top competitors in our region.
All Pics side by side
Conclusion
Be confident that when you are planting Midwestern Wildlife Zone products, you have some of the best seed varieties on the planet available for your food plots, mixed in the right proportion to ensure planting success, wildlife attraction, and long stand life.
You can be sure that these mixes will stack up well against some of the biggest name brands in this category. We've placed our mixes against the best competition we could find - reputable seed companies putting out quality products - and we are more than holding our own.
Checking Out the New Hooyman Spreader
I tried out the new Hooyman 24V electric chest spreader yesterday frost seeding Gallant Red Clover into a Stamina White Clover/ Jumbo Ladino Clover mix at the MWZ plots.
I spread about 2 acres of narrow (15ft) paths with the chest spreader and 5 acres of large plots using the 125 lb Vehicle Spreader on the landowner’s Side by Side.
I was shooting for a rate of 4 lbs per acre of red clover. I was very impressed with both of these units in their ease of use, spreading accuracy, width of spread, and ability to adjust the width of the spread pattern!
I was able to spread the 15 ft wide paths and by turning the speed button down I could get the pattern down to about 4 feet wide and at full speed I was spreading clover about 25 ft wide!
The close-up picture shows a unique feature of this spreader - it uses a custom, wearable vest that has padded shoulder straps and a small metal post in the front that the chest spreader slides down on to; this makes it easy to refill the spreader. You don’t have to lift it off your shoulder or up over your head every time you fill; simply lift it off the peg and fill it up! It has a window at the top so you can see how much seed is left in the hopper and is very user-friendly.
The Vehicle Spreader is also easy to use and versatile. I spread clover at the lowest rotor speed of about 12 ft wide and at the highest speed of about 30 ft wide! It also was able to spread it at the low rate of 3-4 lbs/acre.
Then I switched to 0-0-60 Potash fertilizer and was able to easily and accurately spread at the rate of 50 and 100 lbs. / acre and was not at the highest gate setting - so I could have applied many more pounds of fertilizer per acre.
The Vehicle Spreader has two large windows on the back so you can keep track of how much seed or fertilizer you have left and it is also easy to put on and take off of your ATV.
I am impressed with the quality, comfort, and versatility of these spreaders and also the price. the chest model is at the upper end of small spreaders but has way more to offer than many other spreaders. The Vehicle model is a lot less money than anything that size that I have seen and now that I have used both of these I am confident that others will love them as well.
Article posted by Brian Haynes.
Questions? Don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.