ear corn

[Marshall]

I have decided that next year I am going to put up some ear corn and grind cob and all. The grain elevators around here won’t take oats any more. They also won’t grind less than twenty five bags of feed at a time. I don’t have the best ground so I usually get around 70-75 bushel/acre of shelled corn. My question is how many acres would it take to get 335-350 bushels of ear corn?

[dominiquer60]

We had a really dry summer and a real deer problem so our yields are not great, but last night Dale harvested 600 bushels of ears off of a three acre field and he still has up to one load left to harvest (our wagons hold 200 bushel). The neighbor planted this field because he wants to reseed it to alfalfa next year, he uses a good amount of synthetic fert, and it may have very well been a stacked variety too. I am thankful that all the rest of the corn that will go into our cribs are not GMO, but the yield should be around the same depending on how wet the ground was during the drought here. Also a bushel of shell corn equals roughly 2 bushels of ear corn.

If you are feeding just horses I know of some really well conditioned drafts that eat whole spelt, corn off the ear and good hay, no grinding necessary, just a thought.

Erika

[Marshall]

It will be for beef calves. The horses may get a little if they ever see enough work to need it. I am planning on planting open pollinated corn so the yield may be a little lower. I was just hoping I could do it on 2.5 to 3 acres.

[dominiquer60]

We tried an open pollinated variety from Shumway for silage this year. The plants were huge and the ears were good sized. All of the corn in this reagion was too dry to make good silage, but it chopped up nice and we would try an open pollinated corn again. We don’t spray insecticides either, we figure the deer do tons more damage than those little bugs, so why bother, it takes time and money too. I know a guy in Michigan that would get 120 bushel from OP corn with just manure and lime spread. What you want to do sounds feasible to me.

[Marshall]

Would it be possible to find out what variety he grows? I have looked at several varieties but am not sure which one to go with. I had one supplier recomend wapsie valley which looks good but has some red and brown ears. That wouldn’t bother for my use but if I had extra to take to the elevator I know they would not take it.

[dominiquer60]

I will try to find out, I know it was an OP with high protein from Shumway, but they don’t advertise it as such.

[Rivendell Farm]

We used to grow OP corn in our part of Michigan, but gave it up because the deer much preferred it to the hybrids. The combination of hungry deer and coons left very little for us. Where are you located? Bob

[Marshall]

I am in the thumb. The last couple of years I have been getting crop damage permits. After shooting two or three they seem to disperse. The fourth and fifth take a little more effort to get. Racoons haven’t been much of a problem but we live trap them all year. They are getting thined out. What variety did you grow?

[Rivendell Farm]

I’ve lost track of the OP corn we grew back in the nineties, but we did get some from the seed savers exchange. One of our neighbor’s grew a white corn called Minnesota 13 and got high yields of beautiful big ears. Reid’s yellow dent was a popular silage corn that we grew once, but it got 10 feet tall and had problems with lodging.
Livestock really prefer the OP corn to hybrids, and so do children. When we hand husked ours our boys loved to chew the slightly sweet kernels as we worked. Bob

[Marshall]

Ten feet would be a little tall. We get some pretty healthy winds around here.

[dominiquer60]

So I found it, the variety is Goliath, the super tall silo corn. The OP is white, but if you wanted to tinker with gehybridizing the hybrid Goliath is yellow. This guy managed to “naturalize” his Goliath to get it down to being 105 day corn by saving his own seed. He originally got the Goliath from Cherrygal.

We tried Goliath ourselves this year and it truly is the prize winner for tallest stalk at both fairs that we go to. We planted one bag with our usual silage corn and it looked to be on steroids. We did experience a little lodging right before chopping, but with our drought and little moisture there was not much strength left to the plants. Some of the seed hung around the hopper for a few fields, most of that didn’t pollinate well because it is such a longer day variety than we normally plant. But we did find a few here and there that have nice white ears with a couple flecks of yellow. I want to try a bag again and hope that it is a more normal year next year, but we shall see. We saved a few ears to replant for jumbo show corn.

I hope to try a hominy variety next year, the varieties are too long a day for this area, but if I start them inside and transplant a pound of seed out early and cover, I may get some good corn for grits and/or pazole. We try to find a different new crop every year, this year it is sugar cane, 6 feet tall and growing, it is time to bring it into the sunroom in the house. I hope to harvest it this winter.

Good Luck,

Erika

[Oxbow Farm]

Here’s a company that has a couple varieties. Don’t know how economical theya are. http://sustainableseedco.com/flint-corn/

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