I have TONS of gray squirrels and my buckeyes literally rot into the ground before they will eat them. But no shortage or acorns or hickories here either.

Never fails, when the suckeyes get 2 scores or better they go prevent defense. rushing 3 def lineman and playing prevent never works especially for the duration of the 4th quarter . never understood that line of thinking.

Urban liar would never do that, he just kept the defense at em.


Never knew a squirrel to eat a Buckeye,. learn something everyday in this place.

The squirrels prefer buckeyes over most other nuts here. It makes buckeyes hard to collect.

Keith

This is what I have seen. Hickorys get hit first, followed by walnuts, followed by acorns, and if they're really starving they'll hit the buckeyes. I have seen them eat buckeyes in times of plenty occasionally, however. Nothing's an absolute in the woods.

I wonder if the buckeyes that aren't being eaten have weevils, or other pests in them? I suspect they do.

Keith

I only have one tree and it's not very big but it puts out a ton of nuts. And they will sit there all winter just like every year and sprout up a bunch of baby buckeyes in the spring. Squirrels here just flat out don't like them.

Thought that was odd so I looked it up.Says all parts of the buckey plant are toxic to humans and livestock.Leaves,bark and nuts.Says Squirrels are the only ones that seem to be able to eat the nuts will no ill affect,,but only do so as a last resort.Interesting.

It's the same here. Maybe rebel squirrels are smarter than yankee squirrels and pass on the toxic nuts.

Yea for SOAP. Good answer!!!!!.......jk

One difference is that we have the bigger fox squirrels here rather than gray squirrels.

I looked it up. There are 13 to 15 species of buckeyes, with the most common being:

Ohio buckeye (Aesculus glabra)

Yellow buckeye (Aesculus flava)

Red buckeye (Aesculus pavia)

California buckeye (Aesculus californica)

Texas buckeye (Aesculus glabra var. texensis)

I would guess, that just like how hickory nuts like shagbark and shellbark taste very good and pignut and bitternut taste very bad to us, that different species and varieties of buckeyes taste from very good to very bad to squirrels.

Keith

I was going to say I agree with Yote and that nothing really touches Buckeyes here that I know of but Keith's post makes a lot of sense. Not sure which ones I have growing though, but never seen a tasty one either.