Pheasant Friendly Plants for pen.... Suggestions

[lockedhearts]

I have my eggs going in the bator today! Have a suitable pen that was a former chicken pen, have wired over top of chicken wire with hardware cloth. Have limed the ground and tilled it in. So want to use the long weekend to go ahead and get some planting done.
Suggestions for plants, decorations for a 12 X 12 area? It gets some afternoon sun but not full sun. We live in Georgia NW area

 

[DomC]

I heard Buck wheat is good or maybe a wild bird seed mixture of sunflowers. Good luck.

 

[philter4]

Quote:
I do not know if this is true for birds, but buck wheat is poisonous to mammals after it is a couple of inches tall. The greens contain fagopyrin which can cause photosensitivity and nerve problems like tingling and numbness in mammals. This is not necessarily true for birds, but I am just letting you know how it effects mammals. The young sprouts do not have as much of the fagopyrin as the mature greens and the seeds are safe to eat.

I planted my pasture and pens with pasture greens with a heavy mix of alfalfa and put cold tolerant bamboo in every pen, it seems to work great. The birds don't bother the adult bamboo but eat some of the shoots and the seed mix I use is safe even if it grows in the pen, which rarely happens. I have lots of predators on my property (in march a mountain lion killed a deer right in the front yard in full view of the living room window and a family of foxes raises a family here every summer) so I have chicken wire under every pen so some seeds do sprout and survive until they are half an inch tall, but that is about it.