There are cost-share programs available through the 1996 Farm Bill to offset the loss in revenue associated with wildlife management practices. Contact your local Farm Services Agency office for more details. Dividing large fields with hedgerows will provide birds with protective cover while the crops are beginning to grow, and will increase the amount of available habitat over the entire area. No-till farming may be one of the best methods of creating available habitat. To make pine plantations more suitable for bobwhite one must sacrifice some short-term revenue.
Plantations offer about five years worth of habitat after the original clear-cut.
After the first five years the pines are tall enough to shade out all the beneficial quail weeds and the understory becomes a carpet of pine needles and dead vegetation. In order to make these areas suitable for bobwhite, stands must be thinned earlier than a normal thinning. The thinning needs to reduce the basal area to one that will allow sunlight to reach the ground in order for beneficial weeds to grow. Once thinned the stand should be put on a one or two year burning rotation in order to suppress hardwoods and prevent litter build-up from becoming too thick. Pasture land management for quail is a mixture of pine plantation and agricultural land management.