I would like to feed cotton seed as a suplement feed along with my regular protien. Will it harm my whitetails bucks does fawn.willit make my bucks sterial orthe does not breed.any ideal ,we are in south texas
It will not make them sterile. The worst that it will do will lower the sperm count. We feed it in south Texas and still have one of the highest survival rates in the area.
I can't speak from experience, but guys in Texas say that if the ingredients contain the word "cotton", beit cottonseed, cottonmeal, etc., they don't use it. I have zero experience with it, but you won't find it in my own feed ration.
We feed an 18 wheeler load about every 3-4 months. We have 2 bucks that hopefully we will harvest in the next week that score between 210-225 that live at the cottonseed cages all year. The deer stay fat and shiny all the time even during droughts where we get less than 10 inches all year. Our fawn crops are above average than surrounding ranches, etc, etc. We feed cottonseed in our DMP pens and the deer eat it at a higher rate than the "unpenned deer" and still have over 120% fawn crops. I would not feed it as a sole ration but is an excellent addition to a supplemental feed program.
We have bulk free choice protein feeders that we feed 20% record rack from January 1 through September. Within 30 yards we have a corn feeder and a cotton seed cage. We try not to feed free choice feed from October through December to keep bucks from being nocturnal and then start back up around the first of the year when the bucks start to look a little thin from the rut.