Never underestimate the power of a soybean to compensate for missing neighbors or early-season feeding damage. It’s one of the things that make it difficult to predict how soybeans will react after a major setback. Sometimes, as the old Timex commercial once said, “They take a licking and keep on ticking.” Or in this case, they keep on growing.

“I noticed some plants along the small woods were nipped off by deer during my first visit earlier in the season,” remarks Steve Gauck, sales agronomist for Beck’s, based at Greensburg, Ind. He visits and scouts the Soybean Watch ’17 field at key times, making important observations and explaining what he finds. Beck’s is the sponsor of Soybean Watch ’17.

Soybeans compensate
When Gauck scouted during a visit in late July, he checked some of those same soybean plants the deer had nipped off. He didn’t find dead plants. Instead, he found green and healthy soybeans. In some cases, he had to look closely to determine if it was indeed a plant subjected to early-season deer feeding.

“If deer nipped out the tender tops and moved on, there was a very good chance that plants would grow back out,” Gauck says. “That’s exactly what happened. On plants where buds were left intact below the feeding injury, the buds took off and started growing.”

In some cases, the plant formed new branches. If you look closely at some of the plants damaged by early feeding, you can determine where the damage occurred, Gauck says. Instead of growing up at that point, the plant sent out branches, sometimes in both directions from the original stem that was nipped off.

Wildlife damage
Various reports of wildlife damage arise each season. Typically, more reports come from counties where timber stands or small woodlots, like the one next to the Soybean Watch ’17 field, are more common.

Deer like to nibble on young soybean leaves, and will feed on young corn if that’s the animals’ best option for food. Groundhogs also like to feed on crops, particularly young soybeans.

“You’re more likely to encounter these issues in fields next to woods — especially if one or more sides of the field are completely bordered by woods,” Gauck explains. “It’s a cost of doing business if you farm those kinds of fields.”

That’s because there is little you can do to prevent some amount of wildlife damage, he adds. Birds can also pose a problem. Reports of bird feeding leading to poor stands surfaced in south-central Indiana this past spring. Gauck has even seen it on his own family farm. “We’ve watched wild turkeys go right down the row and clean out seed,” he says.

There isn’t much you can do to prevent it, he notes. “When you get a field like this where there was feeding damage after plants emerged and the plants grew back, it’s about the best you can hope for,” Gauck concludes.