Advisory Service of Game ConservancyBiblio.com
Game and Shooting Crops Game Advisory Guides Vol.2
1994ref. 13290Scarce hardcover viii 97pp 4 pages of glossy colour plates numerous b&w photos in text NOT ex-library. Book is clean and bright throughout untanned with unmarked text free of inscriptions and stamps firmly bound. Issued without a dust jacket. -- This is a practical field guide to the selection establishment and management of crops grown to provide cover and feed for gamebirds produced by the advisory arm of the Game Conservancy - a body whose research into farmland ecology and game management has shaped best practice across the British countryside for decades. This second volume in the Game Advisory Guides series draws directly on that research heritage and on the hands-on experience of the Conservancy's advisory officers working with shoots and farms throughout the UK. -- This guide explains how to design establish and manage game and shooting crops on working lowland shoots. It links agronomy ecology and shoot layout showing how cover and feed crops can be built into existing rotations rather than bolted on as an afterthought. Early sections discuss how to choose and position strips and blocks in relation to drives topography and prevailing winds and how soil type drainage and previous cropping influence the choice of mixes and cultivation methods. The core of the book is a series of crop profiles that compare annual and biennial species and mixtures used to provide both shelter and seed through the shooting season and winter. Examples include tall brassicas such as kale and Texel greens and seed rich combinations based on quinoa buckwheat millet canary grass and fodder radish. For each the guide discusses sowing dates and rates fertiliser needs susceptibility to pests and disease and likely longevity alongside their value to pheasants partridges and a wide range of farmland birds. Later sections place game and shooting crops in a wider conservation and policy context. They look at how winter bird crops function as habitat for declining seed eating species how game covers can be aligned with agri-environment and stewardship schemes and how to balance sporting aims with wider biodiversity objectives. The manual continues to be cited in ecological research and is recommended reading on gamekeeping countryside management and wildlife feeding courses reflecting its ongoing relevance wherever shoots and conservation need to be planned together. Game Conservancy hardcover
killarneybooks · Ireland€73.30
