Do Deer Like Chicory and Is It Good for Them?

Deer readily eat chicory and benefit from it in several measurable ways. White-tailed deer in grazing trials spend roughly 40% of their foraging time on chicory when given the choice between chicory, alfalfa, and birdsfoot trefoil, and the plant delivers high protein, strong digestibility, and compounds that appear to reduce internal parasites. The story has some wrinkles, though, because not all chicory cultivars attract deer equally, growth results vary by season, and chicory does not always outperform every alternative forage.

How Eagerly Deer Actually Eat Chicory

Chicory has a reputation as a top-tier food plot plant, and the feeding trial data backs that up, at least in broad strokes. In a study in north-central Alberta, white-tailed deer given access to chicory, alfalfa, and birdsfoot trefoil pastures spent about 40% of their grazing time on the chicory plots. That made chicory the most-visited forage by time spent, even though birdsfoot trefoil scored higher on a relative preference index that factored in how much forage was available versus how much was consumed.¹ In practical terms, deer did not just tolerate chicory; they actively gravitated toward it.

The picture gets more interesting when you look at cultivar-level differences. A study in central Appalachia tested several forage chicory cultivars in free-foraging situations and found that deer clearly picked favorites. They selected the cultivar Lacerta first and discriminated against the cultivar Forage Feast.² This matters if you are choosing seed for a food plot: not all chicory is equally attractive to deer. The cultivar on the bag can make the difference between a plot that draws deer and one that gets browsed only after better options are gone.

Nutritional Profile

Chicory’s appeal is not just about taste. The plant packs genuine nutritional value. Forage chicory is characterized by high crude protein, high mineral content, and low fiber relative to grasses, which makes it easier for ruminants to break down and extract energy from.³ It is also classified as a nonbloating feed source, which is a meaningful advantage over legumes like clover and alfalfa that can cause dangerous gas buildup in a ruminant’s stomach under certain conditions.

The mineral profile is worth highlighting on its own. Chicory tends to be rich in phosphorus, potassium, calcium, magnesium, copper, and zinc, with exact levels varying by genotype and growing conditions.³ For deer, minerals like calcium and phosphorus are directly tied to antler development. Zinc and copper play roles in immune function. A forage that delivers these minerals alongside digestible protein is doing more than filling a stomach.

Digestibility, specifically, is where chicory stands out from common pasture grasses. When researchers compared deer fed chicory to deer fed perennial ryegrass, the apparent dry-matter digestibility of chicory was noticeably higher, roughly 79% for chicory versus about 73% for ryegrass.⁴ That gap means deer extract more energy and nutrients from the same volume of food when eating chicory compared to a standard grass pasture.

How Chicory Moves Through the Rumen

Digestibility numbers alone do not capture the full picture of what happens inside a deer’s rumen. The same study that measured digestibility also tracked how fast feed particles broke down and moved through the digestive system. Deer eating chicory had dramatically faster rumen outflow rates for dry matter, soluble carbohydrates, and cellulose compared to deer eating perennial ryegrass.⁴ In plain terms, chicory breaks down and clears through the rumen faster, which frees up space for the deer to eat more. This faster throughput is one of the main reasons chicory-fed deer tend to have higher voluntary food intake: the rumen is not sitting full of slowly fermenting grass, so the animal keeps eating.

There is one trade-off worth noting. While overall dry-matter digestibility was better on chicory, the digestibility of hemicellulose, one component of plant fiber, was actually lower in chicory-fed deer than in ryegrass-fed deer.⁴ This is a minor point in practice because the net result still favors chicory, but it illustrates that chicory’s advantage comes from its overall composition, not from being universally superior at breaking down every type of plant fiber.

Does Chicory Make Deer Grow Faster?

This is where the story gets more complicated than the marketing claims sometimes suggest. In a review of farmed red deer trials in New Zealand, weaner deer grazing pure chicory swards gained 26 to 47% more weight during autumn and 10 to 14% more during spring, compared to deer on standard ryegrass and white clover pasture. Pre-weaning growth during lactation was also up by about 20%. The researchers attributed these gains to the faster rumen breakdown and higher feed intake that chicory promotes.⁵

But a separate trial comparing chicory to sulla (a tannin-rich legume) and ryegrass/white clover pasture found a less flattering result. In that study, young farmed deer gained only about 183 grams per day on chicory during autumn, compared to 218 grams per day on standard pasture and 293 grams per day on sulla. Final liveweights and carcass weights were both lower for the chicory group than for either alternative.⁶

How do you square these results? A few things likely matter. Season makes a difference: in the same trial where chicory underperformed in autumn, chicory’s organic-matter digestibility during spring was 88%, significantly higher than both sulla at 78% and standard pasture at 84%.⁶ Chicory’s quality can shift substantially between seasons, and autumn growing conditions, cultivar choice, and stage of plant maturity all influence what the deer are actually consuming. The honest takeaway is that chicory is a strong performer in many conditions, but it is not guaranteed to beat every alternative forage in every season.

A Built-In Dewormer

One of chicory’s most practical benefits has nothing to do with calories or protein. The plant naturally produces compounds called sesquiterpene lactones, which have demonstrated antiparasitic activity against gastrointestinal worms, some of the most common health problems in both wild and farmed deer. In lab tests, extracts of these compounds reduced the motility of both lungworm and gastrointestinal nematode larvae.⁵ A broader review confirmed that sesquiterpene lactone-rich chicory extracts show direct and potent activity against different gut helminths of livestock.⁷

This is not just a lab curiosity. In field trials, weaner deer that grazed chicory during autumn needed fewer chemical deworming treatments than deer on standard pasture, and this reduction came without any penalty to growth rates.⁵ For wild deer, nobody is administering anthelmintics, which makes a forage with its own parasite-suppressing properties even more valuable. A deer browsing chicory in a food plot may be getting a modest natural defense against the internal parasites it would otherwise just accumulate.

Most of the parasite research has been conducted on farmed deer and livestock rather than free-ranging wild deer, so the exact magnitude of the benefit in a wild food plot setting is harder to pin down. But the mechanism is real, the compounds are present in the plant at relevant concentrations, and the direction of the effect is consistent across studies. Chicory is not a replacement for veterinary care in a farmed setting, but as a supplementary hedge against parasite load, it is unusually useful for a forage crop.

Inulin and Gut Health

Beyond the antiparasitic compounds, chicory is one of the richest natural sources of inulin, a type of soluble fiber that acts as a prebiotic. In ruminants, gut microbes ferment inulin into short-chain fatty acids, which support the lining of the intestinal wall, reduce inflammation, and help maintain a healthy balance of gut bacteria.⁸ The short-chain fatty acids produced from inulin fermentation are also an energy source in their own right, adding to the overall nutritional value of the forage.

Most of the inulin research has been done in livestock species like cattle and pigs rather than deer specifically, so there is an extrapolation gap. But the underlying biology of rumen fermentation is shared across ruminants, and there is no reason to expect deer would not benefit from the same prebiotic effect. The inulin content does vary with the time of year and the specific chicory variety, tending to be higher in roots than in leaves. Since deer graze the above-ground foliage rather than digging up roots, the inulin dose they get per mouthful is lower than what a root-based supplement would deliver, but it is still present in the leaves they eat.

Drought Tolerance and Seasonal Timing

Chicory has a relatively deep taproot, which gives it meaningful drought tolerance compared to shallow-rooted grasses.⁹ This is one of the practical reasons chicory has become popular in food plots across the American South and Midwest, where summer dry spells can flatten clover and annual plantings while chicory stays green and keeps producing leaves. In regions with genuinely arid conditions, chicory still has limits, but it handles moderate drought stress far better than most food plot staples.

The seasonal angle matters for anyone timing a food plot to hunting season. Chicory is a warm-season grower that produces most of its foliage from late spring through fall. Its nutritional quality tends to peak in spring and early summer, with digestibility sometimes declining as the plant matures and puts energy into flowering. The spring digestibility advantage seen in the New Zealand trial, where chicory hit 88% organic-matter digestibility, reflects this peak-season quality. By late autumn, the leaves may be less lush, and in cold climates the plant goes dormant after hard frost. A chicory-only food plot gives you a strong draw from roughly May through October in most of the United States, but it will not hold deer through winter the way a brassica or cereal grain plot might.

Chicory is a perennial, typically lasting three to five years before stands thin out and need replanting. This is a significant advantage over annual food plot species that require reseeding every year, though it does mean planning for eventual renovation.

Not All Cultivars Perform the Same

If the Appalachian study’s finding that deer strongly preferred Lacerta over Forage Feast tells you anything, it is that cultivar choice can make or break a chicory food plot.² Forage chicory cultivars bred for livestock use, like Puna, Lacerta, Grouse, and Choice, have been selected for leaf production, palatability, and regrowth after grazing. Wild chicory and unimproved varieties tend to bolt to flower more quickly, produce less leaf mass, and may not persist as long under repeated grazing pressure.

Australian trials evaluating seven cultivars and fourteen unimproved accessions across five different growing environments found that cultivars consistently outyielded the accessions, sometimes producing twice or even three times as much herbage. Yields also varied enormously by location, ranging from under 6 tonnes of dry matter per hectare at a dry site to nearly 25 tonnes at a wetter one over three years. At the drier sites, chicory only persisted for two years before thinning out. The takeaway for food-plot managers is twofold: pick a named forage cultivar rather than generic chicory seed, and match your expectations to your site’s rainfall and soil quality.

Mixing Chicory with Other Forages

Very few experienced food-plot managers plant chicory alone. The standard approach is to include it in a mix, typically with clover, brassicas, or other legumes. This practice has some research support. Mixing chicory with legumes like white clover can improve the overall nitrogen supply to the plot because the legumes fix atmospheric nitrogen, which then becomes available to the chicory as the legume roots decompose. The chicory, in turn, adds drought tolerance and summer production that the clovers may lack.

A study examining mixtures of white clover with perennial ryegrass and chicory found that clover-chicory mixtures did produce a positive diversity effect on total yield, though the benefit was smaller than what clover-ryegrass mixtures achieved.¹⁰ This suggests that chicory and clover are not as complementary as grass and clover from a pure yield standpoint, likely because chicory and clover compete for some of the same soil resources. Still, the practical benefits of combining them, extended seasonal coverage, a broader nutritional profile, and insurance against any single species failing, usually outweigh the modest yield trade-off.

For wild deer, a mixed plot that includes chicory alongside clover, brassicas, and perhaps a cereal grain gives animals something palatable across a longer window of the year. Chicory pulls its weight from late spring through early fall. Clover covers spring and fall shoulders. Brassicas and cereal grains carry the plot into late fall and winter. The mix also reduces the risk that a single pest, disease, or weather event wipes out the entire plot. From the deer’s perspective, variety in a food plot mirrors the diverse browse they seek naturally, and chicory is one of the strongest individual components you can include in that mix.

What Chicory Cannot Do

For all its strengths, chicory has real limitations that overeager marketing sometimes glosses over. It does not thrive in heavy shade; food plots under dense canopy will see thin, leggy plants that produce little forage. It needs reasonably well-drained soil and will not tolerate prolonged waterlogging. In northern climates, it goes fully dormant in winter and provides no forage value during the months when deer are most nutritionally stressed. And as the New Zealand growth data showed, chicory does not universally outperform every other forage option. In some seasons and on some sites, a well-managed grass-legume pasture or a purpose-bred forage legume like sulla can match or beat it for deer weight gain.

Chicory also has a shelf-life issue in the field. Even the best forage cultivars start to decline after three to five years as individual plants die off and weeds encroach. If you plant chicory and expect it to perform indefinitely without renovation, you will be disappointed. Most agronomists recommend overseeding or replanting on a three-to-four-year cycle to keep a chicory-based plot productive.

There is also the matter of establishment. Chicory seed is small and requires a firm, well-prepared seedbed or no-till drilling at a shallow depth. Broadcasting seed onto rough, unprepped ground often leads to poor germination and patchy stands. Getting the first year right, with proper soil contact, adequate fertility, and weed control during establishment, is what separates a food plot that deer hammer from one they walk past.

1
PubMed. Performance and dietary preferences of white-tailed deer grazing chicory, birdsfoot trefoil or alfalfa in north central Alberta
2
Agronomy Journal. Nutritive Value and Animal Selection of Forage Chicory Cultivars Grown in Central Appalachia
3
Agronomy Journal. Nutritional qualities, chemical compositions, and yield of chicory genotypes
4
The Journal of Agricultural Science. Rumen digestion and rumen outflow rate in deer fed fresh chicory (Cichorium intybus) or perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne)
5
PubMed. Novel forages for growth and health in farmed deer
6
New Zealand Journal of Agricultural Research. Growth and carcass production of young farmed deer grazing sulla (Hedysarum coronarium), chicory (Cichorium intybus), or perennial ryegrass (Lolium perenne)/white clover (Trifolium repens) pasture in New Zealand
7
PubMed Central. Antiparasitic activity of chicory (Cichorium intybus) and its natural bioactive compounds in livestock: a review
8
PubMed. Physiological Function of Inulin and Its Application in Livestock Production
9
Scientific Papers: Animal Science and Biotechnologies. Forage Chicory (Cichorium intybus L.) – Pretability in Crops and Effects in Ruminants Feeding
10
Nature. The choice of the white clover population alters overyielding of mixtures with perennial ryegrass and chicory and underlying processes