Thursday, September 26, 2013

Corn harvest about finished...

 
John Deere 6850 forage harvestor hard at work

The silage corn did really well this year.  Averaged about 12' tall across the entire field; uniform.  I had a couple of pigs get out and decide that it was delicious, and I wasn't able to get them out of the cornfield until it got harvested. 

Pre-chop
 It think that it worked out to 28 tons of silage per acre; which is, According to Andrew Albert the guy who leased this ground, the best crop he's ever had.  This will feed a lot of cows this winter. 
About halfway done
A handful of corn silage, just chopped. 
 The harvest leaves the ground pretty much bare; I'll be doing some ground work in the next few days to get the seed bed prepared, and then plant a variety of things as future crops (grass, alfalfa, wheat) and as a plow-down cover crop (wheat, red clover). 





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4 comments:

George said...

Do you know the moisture content before being chopped? Can't beat high moisture corn for dairy cows man !!! Looks great.

We're prepping our combine this week, corn testing at 17.6%, so we're definitely ready to take it down for dry corn, we grind it for poultry feed mix.

September 26, 2013 at 4:53 PM
Bruce King said...

I didn't know the answer so asked albert: " it tests out at 26.5% dry matter and doesn't change much from there when we take it out if the pit... maybe a point or two."

September 26, 2013 at 5:18 PM
Unknown said...

Did you also grow corn for grain to help feed your hogs?

September 26, 2013 at 5:31 PM
Bruce King said...

Since I'm new at growing crops, I'm choosing what I grow conservatively, basing my choices on what other farmers are growing in this area, or what the local research station has grown successfully. I've got a wet, marine environment; which means that I don't usually have to worry about too little rainfall, but it makes it really hard to grow crops that require a lot of heat to mature or dry periods to harvest.
Most of the corn fed to hogs is flint corn, that's grown and dried in the field. Once dried, it's combined and then stored dry. Sometimes they'll dry it more before storing it; all depends on the amount of moisture in the kernel. That's one crop that I haven't been able to find anyone growing around here. It just doesn't get hot or dry enough to get the corn to the point where you can just store it. Lots of flint corn is grown in eastern Washington, where they have drier, hotter weather. Just not around here.

What I can grow pretty well is silage corn, but that's harvested green... or grass. probably alfalfa. Green peas... Blue or raspberries. Pumpkins and squashes of all sorts. Cabbage and kale and other brassica crops. Garlic.. just listing some of the crops I've seen grown commercially around here.

oh yea; I need to grow whatever it is as if I'm certified organic. I'm on the 3 year countdown to get certified now, so cannot use most modern sprays or treatments.

September 26, 2013 at 11:05 PM

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