Friday Crop Report on a Thursday!

[woodland]

It made ok silage. The bigger issue was how much the crop degraded while standing. It was all oats with underseeded alfalfa so a thin stand that the snow didn’t flatten it much. Every bushel we managed to get off was soggy so we just piled it and fed it to spruce up the mediocre feed. Most of these fields were far from home and fences so grazing wasn’t an option.

Is your custom crew not coming or they don’t figure they can get it done in those ugly conditions?



After the killing frost our corn all layed over at 5-6 feet and we swathed some but it was way less fluffy than we expected. Not sure what the snow would do to this if we left it but imagine it would continue breaking down?

[grassfarmer]

Woodland I don't think enough harvesting capacity exists in Manitoba to handle the corn crop in a season as poor as this. It's often a stretch to get it done in a good year before winter sets in. Some crews only use tandems and semis and neither of them can go in mud conditions. I think our corn is just too dry already anyways so we will graze it instead. Now if we can just design/find/buy a ration for the backgrounders.
Our corn is still largely standing but it's brown already - maybe we should swath it too as there would be less risk of losing the leaves that way. Easier to cross fence but not so nice if we get 3 feet of frozen snow on top of it.

Your corn won't change much now - turn brown and crisp but it doesn't weather much. Depends on variety but if its Pioneer it'll stay as hard, and be as edible as, bamboo canes.