My name is John Howard and I have a huge interest in providing suitable habitat for partridge and gamebirds.
Drawing on my professional career as a plantsman, I have spent 15 years experimenting with and planting many different gamecrops and wildbird cover crops.
While working in conjunction with Bright Seeds in England – I have developed a highly effective game crop mix known as John’s Delight. A game crop seed mix suitable for REPS, AEOS and GLAS, and indeed better than the standard oats and linseed mixes – John’s Delight will be far more beneficial to local wildlife than other game seed crop mixes on the market.
John’s Delight is an annual crop and needs to be sown every year to get the full benefit from it.
Game Crop Mixes Suited to Ireland
It is the most suitable game crop mix for Irish conditions and requires very little fertiliser, growing well even in very poor soil. Sown in April it can provide nesting cover in May/June for any ground nesting bird that failed with the first brood. Rich in flowers and insect life at this time it will attract wild pheasant and partridge chicks as well as many other species. Displaying many different colours it looks very pleasing to the eye for the whole summer.
Late Autumn & Winter Planting
Then in late autumn and winter it will provide about 1 tonne of seeds for all those hungry birds. One of the advantages of the seeds used in the mix is that they are not attractive to vermin but are loved by game birds and all sorts of finches. This is one of the reasons that crows and pigeons will go for this until very late in the winter. Because triticale is the only member of the corn family in this mix it will not be very attractive to crows, rats and other vermin either.
Conservation;
We were actively involved with Rathcormac Game and Wildlife Club in the creation of the Corrin Nature Reserve, and we also undertake many conservation projects in our local area.
