Rotten Eggs Keep Deer Out Of Beans

Rotten eggs keep deer out of beans LIVESTOCK Miscellaneous 10-6-22 In his annual war with hungry deer, soybean farmer Jackie Helton has found an unlikely weapon: the chicken egg. With enough eggs, the Florida farmer cooks up a smell which stops the hooved pests in their tracks. Every year, he cracks thousands of eggs into a thick batter which he loads into the hopper of an ag plane. After pumping in water for a carrier, the pilot sprays the mixture on the edges of Helton's fields. As the liquid dries and deteriorates in the hot, Gulf Coast sun, it emits that sulfuric smell easily identified as rotten egg. To human noses, it may not be very strong, considering how much it's diluted over the field. But just the hint of the aging egg repels any deer that roam near the fields. "Before I learned about eggs we tried everything to drive off deer," says Helton of McDavid, Fla. "We hung stockings full of human hair along the field edges. We spread so many cases of mothballs that it looked like a hailstorm had hit. "With special pest permits, we even spent time shooting at night. I've killed up to 15 deer in a stretch and probably shot 200 altogether over a period of years. It keeps deer out, but all the waste makes you sick. We couldn't use the meat ourselves and no charitable or governmental institutions, like jails, wanted the free deer, even though they qualified for them." The deer were more than a nuisance. Helton, who farms with his father Roscoe and brothers Mike and Rodney, lost up to 40 acres of beans in a season to the animals. One 600-acre farm they rent in neighboring south Alabama is surrounded by a wildlife management area. In one 30-acrefield, Helton once counted 100 deer gorging on tender, young bean plants. Helton hatched his egg-spraying strategy after seeing a television report about a woman who used eggs to keep deer from grazing in her garden. If the technique worked on a garden, Helton reasoned, why not take a crack at it on the farm? His daughter, Jacklyn, and niece, Christina Lugg, broke 100 dozen eggs which Helton then scrambled with a power drill and paint-mixing blade. After straining out stray shell fragments, he carried the egg barrel to his aerial applicator and asked him to spray the batter over field edges. Depending on the season, Helton sprays one to three times to protect the crop until plants reach knee-high. After plants are that tall, Helton finds the stand compensates for periodic deer feeding. On average, he uses 500 to 600 dozen eggs a year. Fortunately, Helton sells grain to an egg producer who, in turn, gives Helton all the rejects. "Sulfur might work just as well as eggs, but we haven't tried it and aren't sure how to apply it to get enough smell in the field," Helton notes. "Even if we had to buy the eggs, though, it still wouldn't be a bad deal. Price varies, but you probably could buy eggs wholesale and only spend $2 to $3 per acre for the treatment, not counting application costs. And that spraying does more than protect one acre. It keeps deer from straying deep into the field and grazing at our expense." Reprinted with permission from Soybean Digest.

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