Crabgrass as Deer Forage

By GrowingDeer,

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Question
Will deer eat red river crabgrass?  I plan to plant a food plot in cowpeas but was thinking about adding the crabgrass also.  Our ranch is about an hour and a half north of Abilene, Texas.

Brad

Brad,

Deer will eat almost anything if they are hungry enough and nothing else is available.  However, there are much better forage options in most areas than any variety of grass.  Deer simply don’t have the correct bacteria in their gut to digest grass as efficiently as cattle.  The grass would simply act as a competitor to the cowpeas — competing for water and nutrients that the much more preferred forage could use.

Growing Deer together,

Grant