Small scale corn growing for livestock?
 

With corn prices out of this world, the thought crossed my mind that maybe I could grow an acre of field corn next year to feed my critters. If I could get anywhere near 100 bushels/acre, it would take care of most of my corn needs for the year. I can borrow a planter. Has anybody done this? How obnoxious is it to pick an acre of corn by hand?

Any thoughts/comments/words of warning or advice?

Snapping corn
 

One acre! No problem..I had an old Ford swb pickup and the bed would hold about 25 bu. ear corn, didn't seem that big of a problem to me just picking a load of the evening after work..:cowboy:

Picking the acre is the easy part, a little hard work and a pick-up (like the previous poster) and you'll have it picked in no time. However if this is field (dent) corn and you let it dry in the field... Getting the dry corn off the cob can nibble away at your fingers.

Most animals will get it off the cob themselves, but cracking and separating from the cob is labor intensive. However with the cost of feed right now, I'd certainly do it myself if I needed corn.

I grow my own feed for animals but I also farm, an acre of corn should be no problem for you. Start composting your manure this year so you have fertilizer for the corn. You can plant corn in hills so it is easier to take care for. My old dad use to pick a hundred bushel a day when he use to hand shuck corn as a young man. It will take you a few days more than likley, but you will get it done. Get yourself a good hundred day open pollinated corn and then you can also keep seed from that for the next year. Get your self a nice old wood sided wagon to keep your ear corn in and then buy a small hand corn sheller and you can either get a cracker to break up the shell corn, or maybe a roller mill. It can be done and grain prices are only going to go up more, so don`t think 7.00 dollar corn is high, it will be over 8 by next spring. > Thanks Marc

Get yourself a corn sheller - it will make the job a whole lot easier.

When my dad was teaching farming in Ethiopia back in the early 70's he set up a drier for the field corn and then several shelling stations. Make a race of it to see who can fill a bag the quickest and you can get a lot of corn shelled in no time.

I'm growing 'truckers favorite' which is a good 90-100 day dent corn. I bought a sheller from leimans. So far, so good.

Shell it? :umno: I don't think so! The horses have eaten ear corn before- they can do the work! I was just thinking corn crib, unless I decided to haul a load somewhere to be ground up into corn and cob meal.

Obviously I'd need a soil test, and I'm thinking Round-up and no-till. Is it unreasonable to think 100 bu is attainable on a small plot?

Those are lofty expectations IMO. I don't know why anyone would spray that junk around instead of spending a little time to till, but to each his own I guess.

No Round-Up, please.

Last year I planted 2 acres and got 150 bu per acre. This year I planted one acre, have lots left over from last year. I use round up ready, it seems I can never get to cultivate at the right time. After the corn has been in the crib for several months it is easy to hand shell. I do it every morning for the goats and chickens. That is correct, I feed whole kernels to my chickens and goats. Used to pick by hand into five gallon buckets and dump into pickup truck. Finally bought a cheep corn picker. The only time I grind is for the chickens in the winter when there is no pasture, and then I mix it with excess goat milk.

Have you thought about growing mangels? I believe they are more nutritious than corn. I bought seeds from Johnny's this year, but I didn't get an area prepared to plant them in time. I plan to try to grow a large amount of them next year for feed.

http://countrylivinginacariboovalley...03/mangel.html

http://www.organicgardeninfo.com/growing-mangels.html

http://www.johnnyseeds.com/search.as...chTerm=mangels

http://www.homeandgardenideas.com/ga...rowing-mangels

http://www.homesteadingtoday.com/sho...ghlight=mangel

My grandpa did it with a half acre of sweet corn.

The only problem I can foresee would be if you get heavy rain after the the corn starts drying and before you can harvest all of it. That happened to me the year I grew a plot of bloody butcher corn. It got moldy in the husks so I never tried feeding it to critters or grinding it for meal. (I did plant some of it this year)

I did a quick google on corn yield per acre and found that average is close to 170 bu/acre. But that was a good year with ideal growing conditions and using conventional farming methods (herbicides and man-made fertilizers).

ETA, if you can borrow a small corn picker you can have the field done in about half an hour. We had a 3 row picker and did 20 acres with it every year.

I fed whole kernal corn most of my life to chickens, and we did it when I was home, tho we would break each ear over the side of the bu basket after the corn sheller went to corn sheller heaven. U dont say where your from. Im gonna say your not gonna get 100bu an acre. They say people get 75 bu here in Okieland, but id have to see it. If you cant keep the weeds out of an acre of corn with manual cultivaton, either a double schovel or 5 schovel if you dont have a walking or rideing 1 row cultivator, U need to be in another business. Im 64 nearly, and when Ive raised corn, which is most of the time, Ive raised 5 to 8 acres.

woops u do say where your from. Now, Im sure you arent going to get 100bu an acre.

If your deathly serious about it tho, get Linn Millers book, Horse drawn tillage tools. Read it thourely. Mark out the things that he says you need to do, ESPECIALLY, the things you hadnt thought about. You cant make 100bu off of OP corn, and you cant buy the little amount of hybred without paying a high price for the small amount of seed. I think a gal paint bucket full would easily plant it. Find somebody nearby who is growing op corn so that the seed will be acclamated to your area. Get a good almanac, and learn how to use it. I recommend Lewellians? Moon Sign Book. Prepare the ground as L Miller says to do. Buy your seed locally. Plant it around 8/10inches apart in the row, the width of your choosing. cultivate it as L Miller says.

I am going to make another set of cultivator shanks with different set up useing harrow teeth, 4 to 6 to a shank welded like a rake, and rigged to only go down 3in. THIS IS AFTER THE CORN IS HIGH. Next to, and last cultivation.

Go to U TUBE, and watch (When we farmed with horses)> Youll see them marking the rows, BOTH WAYS, and a guy with 2 hand corn planters planting 3 or so kernals of corn where those lines cross. That way, they could cultivate it both directions, as youll see in the vid. Thatll help get rid of alot more weeds, than planting in the row, BUT, you MAY lose some yield doing it.

In the fall, go out with a corn knife, and cut the stalks and tie every doz to 15 with string, and place them up in shocks. Make a sled around 12ft wide, and however long you wish, with head and back boards on it, and go out and bring in the shocks. Get yourself a limb shredder. Make a silo out of 8ft hi 1 X 2 woven wire, around 20ft dia. pick out the corn CLEAN from the stalk and run the stalk through the shredder. Put the shredded stalks in the silo, and feed them to any cows you have in wintertime along with hay. The extra protein in the stalk of OP corn will help keep the cow s in condition during winter when you may not be able to afford or furnish the hay for them.

Cone up the shredded corn in the silo and cover it.

If you get a wagon like Spring Valley says, Build a rack 3ft high and put it on the R hand side of the wagon. This is called the bangboard. You will easily see it in the vidio. If your horses are taught to start up and stop on command then they will work fine on the wagon. IF NOT. youve got a year to teach them. Just walk beside them. When you get up to their head so that they can see you, say gad up. when the wagon is just 3ft ahead of you, say whoh. Thats it. Over and over, till they get used to it. And dont just walk from back up to front and say gad up. They will get used to the time it takes, which will be way quicker than if your picking a row or 2, and working yourself towards the front. If you do that, then when you go into the field, theyll remember the length of time it took you to walk from from to back, and outa boredom start out earlier than they should.

As to makeing a corn crib. I have had for 20 yrs pallets that the cross boards are around 1in apart. I will use them for the side walls. I intend to build it so that pigs can get underneith the floor. This will make it easier for cats to find mice and rats, It will allow the pigs to find any loose kernals that have fell through the floor, and the floor boards will shrink. I would build yours around 2 pallets wide, . Id put the door 8ft from the opposite side the corn is stacked or piled on. Id make a barricade 4ft from the outter wall. I would set my sheller against that barricade, and throw cobs into it. Id leave an way to get into it to get the cobs out to burn in winter.

Catalytic- I actually did look at sugar beets, but not mangels. They're kinda the same thing. Harvesting them is what put me off. I don't think my back could take it. At least picking corn you get to stand upright! Maybe if I had pigs that are happy to do the digging...

I need to talk to a couple of friends that work at feed mills, but if I do decide to plant corn, it'll definitely be a hybrid variety. No sense, IMO, of almost the same work and cost for half the yield, especially when I'd have to use part of one of my hay fields to grow it.

FarmBoyBill- I hadn't even thought about using horses for cultivating. I've got several broke to drive. Now they're Saddlebred horses bred for the show ring, and they'd probably be insulted if I hooked 'em to a plow, but they'd do it!

Hickory King is a good corn in Ky. White open polinated stalls grow real tall . I have 2 sometimes 3 ears to the stalk , Please rething the round up then you will have to buy Monsanto seed corn at about 240.00 for a 50 lb bag.

Read Gene Logsdon's books. He's been growing his own corn for animal feed for a long time.

Not to turn this into a mangle thread - but the mangles grow up out of the ground - just the tip is in whereas sugar beets are deeper and need to be dug. You can just pick up the mangles and chuck them into a wheelbarrow/wagon/trailer/truck - whatever.
If you plant the RR corn - then like you pointed out - it's just the picking. No problem.

If you use rr u dont have to use monsantos seed.

We commonly plant an acre or less for feeding our animals.
We used RR seed on 2 1/2 acres last year to try to overcome years of neglect on the land we purchased. 1 bag of RR seed cost 120 bucks and did the whole deal.
we only needed N as our P and K were at optimal levels so the fert cost 145. Spraying totalled 160. We did better than 100 bu per acre.
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fb...6635310&type=1

The local mill was happy to take care of us even though we were a small guy.
Went over our soil test and recommended the fert we should use and suggested an herbicide cocktail to provide better weed control than just roundup.

Planted with an old 4 row planter and after having 2 old corn pickers crap out we picked most of it by hand. It is rather tedious. Shell it by hand or with an old crank sheller, just about as fast either way really. I can shell the 4 or 5 bushel I need for the goat feed in an evening sitting in the Lazy Boy.
Store the cob corn in an old gravity box we traded a steer for.
We have also put corn up as trash bag silage.

FBB said, "... You cant make 100bu off of OP corn..."

Well, don't expect 100 bushels, but it isn't impossible. As you said, it depends on where you live. With heavy manuring on good ground, I have grown 110 bushels/acre of Reid's Yellow Dent, and 120 bushels of Johnson County White. Both of those are part of the parent stock used in today's hybrids. But that was about as perfect a year for corn as I've ever seen. This was in hilly southern Indiana, not all that different than KY, depending on the region. Heavily fertilized hybrid corn here has made a state yield record for non-irrigated corn in the past couple years, over 180 bu., IIRC.

80 bushels/acre is what I'd expect on decent ground with adequate manure and/or fertilizer and adequate rainfall at the right times. The OP varieties don't want the dense populations (20K to 24K/acre) that hybrids can tolerate. I had the best results with about 17K to 18K/acre, and a smaller population yielded bigger ears, but less total corn. In general, if you get really big ears, you aren't planting enough corn/acre.

I have never used Roundup on corn, have used 2,4,D, back in the day (1960's) for weed control, but on plowed ground with normal tillage. Plowing down a cover crop, especially a legume like red clover, or alfalfa ahead of corn has many benefits, IMHO, especially in our red clay soil that is very "tight". Corn wants the nitrogen of the legumes, and the clay soil wants the organic matter to help it absorb and hold water.

If you had the ground in pasture, well clipped to prevent weeds from going to seed, then weeds should not be a problem. Fescue pasture is popular in KY, to prevent erosion on hilly ground, and Fescue can be a pernicious weed in corn, so I wouldn't reccomend following it with corn. A standard crop rotation here was winter wheat, underseed it with red clover in January, then get a late pasturing of the clover that Fall. Keep it in clover for hay the second year, maybe for 2 years, then plow it down the 3rd or 4th year and follow with corn. You could substitute sybeans for the clover, too, both being nitrogen-fixing legumes that benefit the corn.

Water is often the limiting factor in corn yields. We get 40" to 44" of rainfall a year here, not always at the right time. Corn wants rain in late summer when it is feeding the ears, which limits yields in the dryer western part of the US. Lots of Iowa farmers have wonderful Loess soil, but not enough rainfall to match Eastern yields. Still, in a good year, Iowa grows a LOT of corn!

I grew a couple acres of corn to feed a pair of Percheron horses, half a dozen hogs, one beef brood cow and her calf, and some chickens for several years, and picked it by hand with no problem. I only snapped the ears off at picking time, stored it in a wood slatted crib, and shucked it as needed. I lost a little to mice, but that fed the cats.

An antique John Deere box-type sheller with a 1/2 HP electric motor did that work for the hogs and chickens. It was a one-hole upright metal machine that would eat corn as fast as you could stuff it in there. Did a 5 gallon bucketful in about 5 minutes. I used a C. S. Bell Co. burr mill to grind feed for hogs and chickens. Still have that and use it for our flour. It will do a coarse grind on corn at about 200 lbs./hour with a 1 1/2 HP electric motor. 2 HP would be better.

I fed hogs and chicken ground feed to reduce waste, and it made me money, since they are both sloppy eaters. Horses and cattle got ear corn, but fed in the manger to reduce loss. They can shell it just fine, but they want it shucked or half of it goes on the ground. Old German farmers here used to let their chickens run in the barn to pick up what the cattle and horses dropped. Their saying was, to feed a cow, let a pig follow it to get what he could, and a chicken follow the pig to get his waste. I guess it worked to some degree, but I wouldn't want to eat that chicken...:rolleyes:

Here's a video of a sheller like mine, running on a hit-and-miss engine: http://www.google.com/#hl=en&sugexp=...w=1366&bih=599 Have to scroll down to find it--I couldn't get the link right.

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.

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. :happy2:

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

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.

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.