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How do you grow
chufa for ducks?
Chufa is a Spanish word that means "ground almond." It is a type of nut-grass that produces a potato-like tuber under the ground that is usually grown for wild turkeys. Chufa are high in carbohydrates and protein and are really quite an excellent food source for wintering waterfowl when flooded. Mallards and other dabbling ducks prefer chufa flooded at a depth of eight inches while the diving ducks, such as ring-necks, redheads, and canvasbacks love it when flooded to depths over one foot. On Catahoula Lake in Louisiana, chufa supplied fifty-seven percent of the diet of mallards; sixty-seven percent for pintails, and averaged sixty-seven percent of food items eaten by widgeon, green-winged teal, blue-winged teal, ringnecks, canvasbacks, and lesser scaup. Researchers reported that chufa ranked tenth of all waterfowl foods in the United States and Canada, and ranked third in the Mississippi Valley region.
Chufa grow best in moist soil but do not do well on sites that are extremely wet or flooded during the growing season, it also commonly occurs in bottomland understories and on exposed mudflats of seasonally flooded Catahoula Lake in Louisiana. The outer contour of the lake is dominated by chufa, composing up to eighty-five percent of the total vegetation. Good chufa tuber production depends on at least a three-month flood-free period during the growing season.
Duck ponds which can be drained and planted during summer and flooded during winter provide excellent habitat for waterfowl. Chufa can be planted from April through July and require 90 to 100 days to mature. Acquiring your tubers from a quality supplier such as Glendale Enterprises assures you of starting off right. Chufa grow best in sandy loam soil, but this hardy plant will grow even in hard clay. To plant chufa, either broadcasting or row-planting is acceptable. Whichever method you choose, spread fertilizer (13-13-13) at a rate of about 200 to 500 pounds per acre (depending on the fertility of your soil) and disk it in. Treflan, either granular or liquid, can be used as pre-emergent weed control. A clean chufa plot with little weed competition will produce greater yields than a weedy plot.
Broadcast planting method: Chufa can be broadcast at a rate of about forty pounds per acre on the prepared seed-bed. Next, disk in to a depth of about one and one-half to two inches. Top dress the chufa with ammonium nitrate (100 to 200 pounds per acre) when the plants are about six to twelve inches in height.
Row-planting method: Row plant chufa on a prepared seed bed as described above using a peanut plate (corn plates will not work). Plant in thirty to thirty-eight inch rows with a spacing of about five inches in the row and one and one-half inches deep. Side dress with 100 to 200 pounds per acre of ammonium nitrate when the plants are six to twelve inches in height. Row planting produces a heavier yield than broadcast planting.i Some critters like raccoons, crows, and skunks love chufa and will dig it up so some folks will treat their seed with Kernel Guard before planting, as a deterrent. An important point to remember about chufa is that they should be planted every third year to avoid insect damage and ensure a good crop. Rotate planting crops such as corn, millet, or rice in other years.
We don't always recommend eating food planted for waterfowl but you really should give chufa a try sometime. It tastes like a cross between an almond and a coconut. Dating back to Ancient Egypt where it was first domesticated about 7,000 years ago, chufa has, in more recent years, been used to grow an acre each fall to fatten the hogs on because they helped make such tasty pork. Chufa also made tasty snacks for the farm family during the winter, and even bread was made from chufa. It was ground into a fine, powdery flour and substituted for half the flour in any bread recipe. In Spain, an elixir is served in health spas, pubs, and restaurants - a beverage that is reminiscent of coconut and pineapple.
According to John Wilkerson of Glendale Enterprises in Florida, one of the few major supplies of Chufa seed in the Southeast, the number of users of chufa specifically for waterfowl has increased every year for the last few years. About one quarter of his yield of 150,000 pounds of chufa a year goes to waterfowl use. This is a pretty good indication that chufa for ducks is working. For more information call John at 850-859-2141 or look up the Glendale Enterprises website at www.chufa.com
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NCWA
exists to conserve, enhance and perpetuate our waterfowl heritage.
