Soybean Comparison--Eagle Forage Beans vs. Dyna Gro Group 7

     This past spring I decided to try an comparison on a small plot behind my home.  I wanted to see if there was an Ag soybeans that would hold a candle to the amazing growth of Eagle Forage Soybeans. 

The Eagles are known for producing  tons of forage for deer to browse on in the spring and summer months, sometimes reaching 5, 6 or even 7 feet tall!!  They are Roundup Ready and very, very drought tolerant as I found out this summer.

The other bean I chose was a product of the Dyna Gro seed company and is a group 7 Ag bean.   What that means is that the plants job is to produce seed pods and beans for harvesting.

I no tilled these beans in on May 1st, and they received 1 inch of rain the following weekend.  Needless to say they got a great jump, but that was it for a long, long while!   The beans didn't get anymore rain until July 4th when we had a good thunderstorm that dumped one more inch of rain.

 Here are some pictures of the beans in August.

Dyna Gro's

Eagles Forage Beans

     While I suspected that the Eagle would get taller and produce larger leaves, the Dyna Gros hung in there and while shorter, they still make a lot of leaves.

Since the DG group 7's are in an earlier producing class, they did flower and begin putting on pods about 4 weeks earlier  than the Eagles. 

Here some pictures of the beans once they dried down and lost their  leaves

Dyna's on left and Eagles on right

Here are some individual plants that I pulled so you can see how many pods the two produced.

Dyna's

Eagles

Side by side---Eagles on left and Dyna gro Group 7 on right

Conclusion----Just what I had expected, the Dyna Gro's produced many more seed pods and beans and the Eagles produced much taller, leafier plants, as they are designed to do.

One side note on the two beans, the Eagles are forage type as I mentioned above.  If you live in a areas with a high deer density, and they are browsed very low to the ground, they will continue to grown and put on new stems and leaves.  

The Dyna Gro's on the other hand are bred for seed production.   If they get up 6 to 8 inches high and a deer comes in and snips the plant off a few inches from the ground, it is done. It will not grow anymore or produce any forage or beans. 

I guess the best of both worlds would be to plant a mix of these two varieties to achieve the best of both worlds!   Thanks for following along with my little experiment!!!