Corn?

I can't grow corn for as cheap as I can buy it out of the neighbor's bins if I take into account my time.

What does a bag of seed corn cost?

When I wore a much younger mans clothes I raised a little over an acre of corn every year. It took me several days to pick and haul in. I had a small trailer made out of a datsun pickup bed and had a side board made of a couple two by fours and a sheet of plywood on the side. I pulled it with my tractor and would pick four rows at a time... move the tractor up and do another stretch. I was raising old timey corn... it had a red cob with yellow kernals that had red stripes on them except about every 200 ears there would be one that was solid red. I saved those for seed the next year. I only shucked those ears and shelled them by hand for seed. the rest of the crop (150 bushels or so) went into the crib until needed. I would take a load to our local feed store, have it ground shucks cob and all, mixed it with cottonseed meal and some high protein pellets and feed it to my calves. It is cheap to raise if you dont count labor. If you can find a job that pays 50 cents an hour.... take the job and buy your feed.

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"Nothing so needs reforming as other peoples habits." Mark Twain

Everyone so far says.. when I was a kid... we did this. Right, how about 40 years later lol? With 7 family members it will probably take you a day pick an acre. I'm not saying don't do it.. but if you had to hire to do it... (or value your time) figure 8 (or more) man hours per 50 bushels of corn.. According to the US Dept of Ag (in the 40's lol!!).... Shelling it adds quite a bit more time...

http://books.google.com/books?id=k0o...0rates&f=false

Is silage done anymore? I remember the cows on the family farm being fed silage and hay throughout the winter. The silage was the entire corn plant chopped up. It stunk but was easy to make and use. I know it has fallen out of favor, but other than an off-flavor to milk never quite understood why.

$ 300 a bag for what I got last year

If the goal is income, you would have to have a whole lot of corn. I think it would be much more than any homesteader could use.

What did you get? It must have been a huge bag. Must be a typo.

I started picking corn when I was around 7, and dad had a WB 1 row picker by the time I was 10 therebouts, tho we still had to open the rows, 4 on each end and in the middle. By the time I was 12 dad had a #24 2 row mounted picker and that ended all picking. That would have been round 59/60. I scooped corn till around 62 when Uncle Walt gave dad his old Kelly Ryan grain elevator.

When I was a kid our single row picker broke and they had to order the part so after school we went out and picked a row a day into baskets and dumped them into the wagon. There were five children and my father, with in a week we had it all picked, it was about 3 1/2 acres. My father picked while we were at school too, and that helped get it done faster. If you have the time, it is not hard work and kind of fun.

My 1892 corn sheller is a Mountville Hero two hole corn sheller. I have put two heaping bushels of ear corn through it in one minute. I have taken it many times to our local old engine show and the public has fed up to two tons of corn through it in three days. Shelling corn is fun.

Rusta... Yea you have an motor on it and sure you can go through it pretty quick... I've hooked ours up to the Farmall A and it chugs along quite nicely, however, many are still hand crank. Anyhow.. I think if one is going to raise grains for animal feed, one acre is just not worth the effort to do by hand.

And yes, chopped silage is still done quite a bit, many farms mix green corn (ears basically finished up), alfalfa/grass mix.... you've gotta have a silage pit, silage bags, tarp it, silo.. something to keep it from spoiling. All of those have their good/bad features... most require heavier equipment than many homesteaders will need.

For 1 acre of corn picking by hand would be the only way I would go. It wouldn't take long to pick unless you wanted it to take up some time. If you plant three acres or more and there were plans in the future to continue this then you might want to look for a mechanical picker.

Bellcow

I was putting ears in the sheller, OR at least putting them on the tray of the IHC sheller he had before I could turn it. THEN, when HE thought I was old enough, I would turn it while HE put the ears in. A ear of corn, going through the sheller, can take a LONG time when your 6yrs old. Many the time he wouildnt let me get it cleared and back up to speed before hed put in another, or another would slip past him and get into the sheller, and then he would have to turn the flywheel to get it shelled.
I hooked mine up to the Cub, and shelled a buncha corn several yrs ago. Worked good. hand cranking shelling, a couple bu is for the young ONLY.

To go on with what bellcow says, a corn binder, IN GOOD CONDITION could be a way to go. Cut the corn and tie it into bundles, Bring the bundles in and pick them whenever, OR, if feeding hogs throw in ear stalk and all to them. Cows will eat the leaves IF theyre darn hungry. Get a hammermill, and grind up stalk ear and all. Mix it with oats and feed to anything. Put water in it for a slop.

I'm curious, as we have considered doing the same....last year, I planted a small corn patch for us humans, but after harvesting, I cut all the stalks down to ground level while there was a little green left in them. I dried them in the sun a couple of days, then in the warm barn loft. I didn't see any mold, so it seemed to work. Then, as winter rolled around, I fed the stalks out as treats to the goats and cattle. They loved it! Rather than picking the corn, can you simply cut the stalks with corn on, dry it that way, and feed the whole stalk? What would be the downside of that? In our case, we don't feed our cattle the corn kernels, so it would go to goats, hogs, or horses, but whatever is not digested, the chickens pick through and eat. Would it work?

My concern would be that you really have to make sure its dried down well or the mycotoxins can be really bad for cattle, poultry etc.

I forgot about the binder, yep thats an alernative way to go..

Beets, people used to, and I suppose they still do, take a chopper and wagon and go out and cut forage, ear an d all for cows. Whats the different, and its GREEN.

When we pulled corn by hand and then turned the cows in to clean up the stalks. You could cut stalks with ears and store for later grinding and feeding which would give more control of the feeding. More work but would be more feed and control. When I was to little to help my uncle would set the hammer mill in the corn patch and grind only when he needed more feed.

Bellcow

Was this a stationary hammermill with a belt or one on wheels with PTO?