Friday Crop Report on a Thursday!

[woodland]

Yeah that is my next step to try grazing corn. Neighbor has a good thing going on. Excellent canola after a winter grazed paddock. Very little input fertility needed.

We were half done our winter feeding when this stuff was sprayed in June. Less work than growing greenfeed and next to nothing to do in the winter. I know a fellow east of me that grazes ewes on it too. Definitely fits the KISS theory well.


They’ll start on it within a week or two.

Any questions just ask🍀

[GDR]

Woodland or furrow any experience with silage baling corn? I know Olds College had planned to do that a couple years ago and had a shorter variety that was really bushy and thick, I never heard how it turned out. Would like to try some corn but not sure I want to graze it.

Is it a must to use a planter or can a guy experiment with the drill?

[AlbertaFarmer5]

Woodland or furrow any experience with silage baling corn? I know Olds College had planned to do that a couple years ago and had a shorter variety that was really bushy and thick, I never heard how it turned out. Would like to try some corn but not sure I want to graze it.

Is it a must to use a planter or can a guy experiment with the drill?

My neighbor has been growing corn for years using a press drill with 1/2 or 2/3's of the runs blocked off. Works very well for him. Has very even consistent stands.

His corn this year with no rain is easily the best corn I've seen in years.

My thoughts on silage baling is that it would need to be a chopping baler. I'm thinking the stalks would need to be chopped to let the sap out to help ensile the rest of the material which would be very low moisture by the time it is ready to silage. But I have no experience at all.

[newguy]

I seeded with a Morris drill.then I rolled it.Just kept switching gears and testing to get the right rate. Never blocked any runs 10 inch spacing.My corn was also a charity corn maze fund raiser but on 12 acres I feed 75 cows for 6 weeks

[burnt]

I seeded with a Morris drill.then I rolled it.Just kept switching gears and testing to get the right rate. Never blocked any runs 10 inch spacing.My corn was also a charity corn maze fund raiser but on 12 acres I feed 75 cows for 6 weeks

That is really cool!

[sumdumguy]

How tall did it get?

[newguy]

How tall did it get?

8 feet.

[furrowtickler]

Woodland or furrow any experience with silage baling corn? I know Olds College had planned to do that a couple years ago and had a shorter variety that was really bushy and thick, I never heard how it turned out. Would like to try some corn but not sure I want to graze it.

Is it a must to use a planter or can a guy experiment with the drill?

I don’t have any experience with silage baling corn yet
It’s been kicked around by a few guys
The corn we cut is going to be baled here in a few days will be dry most likely. That’s what they wanted to do. Stocks still had a fair amount of moisture in them , we were surprised when they were swathed.
I will ask around if anyone has done silage corn bales.
I am sure someone has tried .
Maybe on an average year the corn too tall to swath ?
Was not an issue this year. Tallest was 6-7 ft in early August , but corn does shrink a lot this time of year .
We had our faba beans silage baled at around 65% moisture, then they haled them home and wrapped them . That worked very well but totally different plant of course

[woodland]

Woodland or furrow any experience with silage baling corn? I know Olds College had planned to do that a couple years ago and had a shorter variety that was really bushy and thick, I never heard how it turned out. Would like to try some corn but not sure I want to graze it.

Is it a must to use a planter or can a guy experiment with the drill?

Haven’t tried baling it. I imagine getting the air out with the coarse stalks and keeping the plastic from getting holes could be tricky. Never really looked a chopping baler but I thought the knives retracted for the last 6 inches so the bale would hang together?

We seeded a quarter once by by blocking 2/3 of the runs on a press drill and it did ok. I know of one guy who protills the stalks, floats the seed and fertilizer, and hits it again with a protill and is happy with it. Looks good from the highway at least.

When each seeds costs 1/4 of penny it kinda bothers me to see any on the surface. A drill should work fine as long as the meters don’t grind the seeds. I know nutrien up here has a little planter you can use but it’s on 30” rows and I think that’s too wide for us northerners. Our planter is on 22” rows and seems to canopy decently.

Get a few bags of seed and try it. We alternate long and short season varieties within the planter as a hedge with the weather. Sometimes moving critters into corn that have never seen it they get scared to go in it. Kinda comical to watch at times. Experimenting can be fun🍀

[BreadWinner]

How much fertilizer does it need Woodland?