In autumn, winter and spring, the greater prairie chicken fre- 

 quently feeds on wheat. Much of the material found and identi- 

 fied as leaves of grass probably was wheat. In eastern Kansas 60 

 to 70 per cent of the food consumed by the greater prairie chicken 

 is thought to be derived from cultivated crops, either seeds or 

 leaves, whereas insects and weed seeds make up approximately 5 

 per cent and leaves of forbs and wild grasses make up the remainder. 



At first inspection, these data might seem sufiicient cause for 

 condemning the greater prairie chicken as detrimental to agricul- 

 ture. There is no doubt that the bird does consume large quan- 

 tities of grain. Hamerstrom et al. (1941:193) found that penned 

 birds of this species consumed, in addition to browse, approxi- 

 mately one and one-half ounces of grain per day per bird. This 

 seems to be a fair estimate for wild birds, for a full crop contains 

 more than one-half ounce of grain, and a bird would presumably 

 eat more than two full crops of food per day. Accepting this figure 

 as the average amount of grain consumed per day, a flock of 100 

 birds would consume approximately four and one-half bushels of 

 grain each 30 days. In areas with flocks of 100 or more birds per 

 square mile, as found in this study, it is obvious that a considerable 

 quantity of grain would be consumed by them. 



But, what is the source of this grain? Modem agriculture is based 

 on the use of machinery. It is economical for the farmer to use 

 machinery to harvest his crops, even though other methods might 

 result in less waste. Formerly, when most grain crops were shocked 

 and left in the field until threshed or fed, prairie chickens and other 

 species made inroads upon this grain. In the Welda Area most 

 crops were combined from the standing grain, or the shocks were 

 removed from the fields before prairie chickens had begun to 

 feed from them. An exception is that some oats remained in the 

 shock during the wet weather of 1951. Mechanical harvest of crops 

 in the field, leaves feed unavailable to cattle. This waste feed was 

 the source of most of the grain used by prairie chickens in the 

 Welda Area. At no time were the birds observed to use any 

 grain other than waste. It is known, however, that damage to 

 shocked grains occurs when the shocks are left in the field during the 

 autumn and winter. This practice leaves the crop subject to loss 

 from many granivorous forms of wildlife, and is not recommended. 



The second large item of cultivated crops used by the greater 

 prairie chicken is the leaves of legumes. The most commonly used 

 cultivated legumes are those found in pastures — Korean lespedeza 

 and white clover. Intensive feeding on newly sown alfalfa would 



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