Small scale corn growing for livestock?

Some friends of mine used to grow an acre of corn and when fall came they would just turn the hogs and geese into the field and let them do the harvesting.

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Yes, I said that a normal, regular farmer wont make 100bu an acre op. Now, in saying that, I realize that there are those who go to the work and trouble, and cause of that , they make significantly more. Ive heard of a farmer makeing over 400bu an acre corn. I Think 427bu. BUT, He was trying for the record. I have a McCormack Deering sheller exactly like a couple shown. IF ya do go with OP corn, when it comes time to be saveing the seed for next year. Choose the longest ears. Do this when picking the corn out of the shucks. Then with a corn kniofe, Cut off both ends leaving the middle. Shell out the middle and save it for its your next years seed.

FBB,

That is a good way to grade your seed corn so that it will fit a planter plate! A friend of mine has an antique grading machine, mostly made of wood, that will sort corn grains into 5 sizes so you can pick a planter plate to fit. But those things are rare--I'd never seen one before in my 65 years living in corn country.

There are still a FEW 2 row pull-type IH planters around that work very nicely for a small patch. The better ones are newer, and made to pull with a small tractor, say from a Farmall A and up. They are very reliable, as long as you never let the thing roll backward a few inches, which will plug the shoes and stop them up with dirt. The old horse-drawn planters that I have seen here are all about worn out/rusted down, and no parts available for them.

Because of the planter dilemna, I once bought a 4 row planter, 3 pt. mount, a "toolbar" style, and cut the outer 2 rows off of it to make it more useful for me. That was more maneuverable and gave me a lifetime supply of spare parts from what I cut off of it.

I rebuilt my 2 row IHC planter 3yrs ago. It looks like a horse planter, but its built of slightly bigger components. and it has a trip lever and an adjusting crank instead of a seat and hand lift. I cant back up with it either, I found the fert cans and mounted them on it. Had built for me spouts so that I can lay the fert beside the seed row. Ive got 2 cultivator shanks that Ill mount on it when I plant so as to bury the fert. Kinda cumbersome, as when tripped up, it barely goes above ground. I rigged a drawbar for my 2pt lift on my CC Case, and it will lift it high enough when i come out of rows so that the cult schovels which is set 4in deeper than the seed can clear the ground also.

You use that crap if you want, I never been afraid of a bit of work keepin corn clean. > Marc

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Im with ya SV. Specially since I read L Millers book Horse drawn tillage tools

Is 100 enough? On just one acre and with some very intensive management I bet you could double that, around here ya might come close to triple that. Plant in 15 in rows since your not gonna run machiner thru it . use large falts and something to SLICE the soil as it plandts and you should get good cross row leafage. You could irra gate if needed specially right after planting. Fertilize heavily use a hybrid and round up.
the bad news is that roundup hybrids run about $300 for a 80,000 seed bag and you only need about 32,000
skip that step and your back in the 100 bushel range

any decent hybrid RR or not should make better than 100 bu per acre with a little effort.
Roundup ready does not equal superior production by any means.
All it means is that it is resistant to the glyphosphate.

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Deja Moo; The feeling I've heard this bull before.

I'm not so sure I'd want RR, my reference to Roundup was to kill stuff to no-till, rather than conventional tillage.

I have a big ol' jug of Roundup, I use it occasionally. It's probably one of the safer herbicides. It is highly toxic to fish and aquatic invertebrates as well as amphibians so I keep it well away from my pond.

The active ingredient in Roundup - glyphoate - isn't even toxic to fish & aquatics - it's the types of soaps/ surfacants they use to make the glyphosate more effective that harms the aquatics the most.

Rodeo is the brand name of a form of Roundup that works in waterways with minimal damage to those critters. It has a different, more expensive soap/ sticky/ surficant in it.


Anyhow, a hybred you should easily make 100 bu per acre if you have enough rainfall (or irrigation) and have your soil fertility up - N, P, & K after you make sure the ph is right. And control the weeds early! Do those things and you can push 200 bu an acre pretty regularly, but it take attention to the details of my list - big time attention. The national average for corn production is around 160 bu an acre after all.

With an open pollinated type of corn, 80-120 bu per acre is what they often max out at. You still need to pay attention to the details to get there.

Corn grows a couple inches tall, then sits still but feeds it's root system for a couple weeks, them makes a HUGE push to grow big and fast.

If the corn gets any weed pressure during that 'sit still' time, it messes up the plant as it stops feeding the root and tries to grow taller to keep up with the weeds. The plant is then ruined; it will never repair it's root system, and will only be good for 1/2 the yield you could have gotten.

The key to high yielding corn is to have your soil ph right, your NPK right in the soil, and to control those early weeds _very_ well. If mother nature is at all kind and you do these things well, you will get very good yields.

Roundup helps you deal with that critical weed issue and so it more consistantly allows high yields. Roundup doesn't make the corn grow any better, but it allows you to grow better corn.

If you use conventional hybreds or open pollinated corn, you still need to find a way to control those early weeds - very critical to high yields.

--->Paul

Several people in this posting have said tht theres no reason why anybody cant make 100bu min Hybred and 80 min op. Some few have mentioned 200bu acre. Well. Official in Okla said that there was going to be NO corn crop as its all burnt up

I disagree with him, But, I bet that it dont make no 80bu what ive seen here hybred.

I hear you FB Bill, I'm living on the opposite side of things up here - a lot of corn never got planted, not so bad in my close neighborhood, but in the surrounding 40 miles or so, lot of wet land that didn't get planted. I actually switched about 10% of my planned corn acres to beans.

What was planted to corn was put in real late, it's going to take a nice fall period to get good quality yielding corn.

--->Paul

Yes, a bad weather year for corn in many places. It was so wet here in Indiana that a lot of corn got put in late. But, what did get planted ore or less on time is doing great so far. Depends on late season weather now. Corn wants some late season rain to fill ears well, and things are drying out fast here.

Just for reference I think the record for corn is something like 400 bushels per acre

427 If I remember right. Old guy planted 2 or 3 acres to get it, the record. I think he had got a record amount once before.

Bad thing is, People see these amounts, and being young and fulla vinegar, they think they can at least make 3/4ths of it. AND while there doing that thinking, there forgetting that they dont yet have 1/2 the equipment to do it with, What they have got, They havnt gone through to see if it will preform when needed, and not break down. they dont have ground thats had corn on it before, and in alot of cases never been farmed in the last 20/30yrs. They forget that they already got commitments to make throughout the year that will preclude them getting in to cultivate, after theyve waited for the weeds to at least reach 4in so they can see them good, Then a hard rain comes, and keeps comeing, and by the time they can get in to them either the corns too tall to plow, or the weeds are lol. Thats generally why big farmers dont reach max records. Dad said that his renter said that they had got 185bu an acre, and dad had GREAT ground. But the guy farmed in Kans and Mo. He had other commitments. He was after quanity rather than quality. If a homesteader has other commitments, like job, Little League, any other organizations that place demands on his time, He wont make the necessary commitments to his corn that HAS to be made to make the most optimimum returns.

For 25yrs, I fought in the SCA. Every Sat, I was out in Tulsa at a park practiceing, or I was on the road going to a war or melee, ect. That was a total waste of time, It ended up getting both my collarbones fractured, and 2 ribs broke, tho it might have saved my life or at least a broken neck when a load 20ft up on a forklift I was driveing fell backwards, and down on my head shoveing it into the steering wheel. Everybody said they couldnt understnd why my neck wasnt broken. Likely alla those years carrying a 16lb bucket on my head one day a week lol.

ANYWAY. Those days were the days when I should have been out working my farm. Doing my fieldwork, ect. A farmer wanting to have the maxzimum yield on his farm cant have it both ways. Hes either there putting in his time and labor, or he isnt. AND the farm responds by growing its maximum or it dosent.

When I was a kid, I thought, Well, Ive plowed it, and disced it, and planted it. Ive got a harrow, and ill harrow it, and then after a couple weeks, itall be ready to cultivate. I hadnt found a cultivator for my F-20 as yet. When I did find one, it was a 2 row go devil I found out at a sale on a FLAT former river bed farm. I didnt think of that. My farm wasnt flat. When I tried to use it, it would slide downhill into the corn row. It was a disaster. THEN, I bought a 2 row horse cultivator. When I went to use it, I found that the tongue was too short, and I had to take it into town to have a welder make a tongue long enough that I could turn short without the wheels eateing up the cultivator. POINT IS. I should have tested the go devil somehow to see what it would do. I should have turned with the cultivcator to see how it would work LONG before I needed to use it. Ive since, upped my arsenal of equipment to plow corn. Yes, Ive still got a harrow, But ive also rigged a spring tooth harrow to go down 2 rows of corn, and it digs deeper than the harrow, and wider. Ive got a 4 section rotary hoe, and tractor mounted cultivators. But the best thing is, now, that im retired, is that ive got the time.

Buy a used self-unloading seed wagon and have it filled in the field while someone is combining. Park it under storage and then drop out the chute under it what you need for a couple of days. I suggest a tarp over it to help keep out birds and coons though.

About shelling corn,,,,
I have put two bushels of ear corn through this sheller in one minute.
Two hands. Two holes to throw corn.

It sure dont look like those kids were giveing it much of a workout. At their age, I was cranking out sheller while dad or grandpa fed it. And, by golly, at that age, It can be hard to crank, beings as neither felt the urge to oil it.

When my wife and I married, I was expected to help with the "family field". That's what they called the ten acre cornfield her father and his brothers planted.

They did the tillage with a 3000 Ford. Planting was done by hand. Harvesting was done by hand. We split the harvest six ways and put the corn up in everybody's corn cribs. The corn was shelled as needed.

Lotta work, but with families pitching in together, it wasn't bad.