Al6—Lancaster Farming, Saturday, December 5,1981
By Doris Crowley
NEWARK, Del. Last summer
was another dry year
disastrously so in some areas
but that didn’t stop two northern
Delaware dairy farmers from
producing 206 bushels of corn
without irrigation. They did it by
switching to no-till and using some
top management practices.
Ed Williams and his son Neal
farm about 450 acres m the
Hockessm - North Star area. Most
of the gram they grow goes to feed
their 90-cow dairy herd. Last
spring they put m about half of
their 200-acre com crop with a new
no-till planter. The rest was con
ventionally planted.
They’ve experimented before
with no-till on a very limited basis
only three or four acres using a
borrowed planter. "We liked the
results,” says Neal, “and decided
this was the year to go no-till.”
It certainly was. They averaged
205.77 bushels an acre dry land on a
14-acre hillside. The strip—a
fertile Chester loam with clay—
traditionally yields well. But it’s
never produced anything like this
before. When they realized they
had something special, they called
in Extension Agent Dean Belt to
confirm the yield.
“This is the highest dry land no
till com yield that the Extension
Service has ever measured here in
Delaware,” says Belt. He knows
the father and son team primarily
through DHIA the state Dairy
Herd Improvement Association.
He didn’t work directly with them
on their com production. “But,” he
says, “They used some dam good
techniques we recommend.” The
com was planted no-UU m soybean
stubble after barley one of the
best possible rotations, according
to Belt.
The Williams’ planted several
hybrids. All did better under no
till, but the top yielder was Agway
849 X, the same long-season hybrid
that gave well over 300 bushels an
acre under irrigation the previous
year in tests at New Jersey’s
Agricultural Experiment Station
in Rutgers.
The com was planted May 6 in
36-mch rows at a rate of 24,000
seeds per acre. Final stand was
« _ If /■
- 1 "
Hockessin dairy farmers Ed Williams (left) and son Neal in
field of no-till corn that yielded 206 bushels this summer
without irrigation.
Del. dairymen grow 206 bushel no-till corn
23,000 plants per acre. “We got
good germination because the
ground was very loose at planting
and there was good penetration,”
says Ed Williams.
They had a soil pH of seven in the
top-yielding field. Potassium and
phosphorus levels were both quite
high because conventionally tilled
soybeans grown there the year
before were affected by drought
and didn’t grow well.
They spread 160 pounds of
nitrogen, 80 pounds of phosphorus
and 80 pounds of potassium before
planting. This was followed with an
m-row planter application of 30-40-
10. They added another 50 pounds
of N with their herbicide treatment
(Atrazine and Lasso).
The lower half of the field, where
yield was highest, also received
some hog manure. Williams
doesn’t grow hogs himself, but got
the manure from a neighbor in
exchange for some com fodder the
man needed. There was about a 12-
bushel increase where the manure
was used.
Ed Williams figures they
averaged between 130-140 bushels
to the acre in their other fields. The
yield is hard to measure since most
of these fields are small and
scattered, fitted in among the
housing developments that have
sprung up like mushrooms m the
area. Since the com is used as
cattle feed rather than sold as
gram, the .ears are picked and
stored in com cribs, rather than
field-combined.
There were several long, dry
spells last summer, but fortunately
the Williams’ managed to get ram
when it was most needed. During
those dry spells, the leaves on their
no-till com were the last to curl.
“Where we had no-till into a good
cover, I feel we got better yields
than from the conventional,” says
Ed Williams. But he wasn’t really
surprised that his best field did so
well. “I was shooting for 200
bushels here, especially since
there was carry-over fertihty from
our poor soybean crop last year. ’ ’
"We’re sold on no-till,” he adds,
“though we can’t go with it 100
percent because we need to plow in
the manure from our cows on some
of the land. No-till and con
ventional are both in our future.”
i->'
Without irrigation
Moisture-holding mulch from previous
crop—in this case soybeans—is one reason no-
Hollenshead herd
tops Franklin DHIA
BY BETH HEMMINGER
Staff Correspondent
CHAMBERSBURG - Ray and
Stewart Hollenshead topped the
list of dairymen at the 1981
Franklin County USDA Annual
banquet.
The Hollenahead herd of 33 cows
were the top producers of milk and
butterfat in the county. This group
of quality animals produced 22,197
pounds of milk and 823 pounds of
fat to capture the awards for the
Hollenshead families.
This outstanding Mercersburg
herd is also the first herd in
Franklin County to average over
800 pounds of fat in one year.
Awards to the Hollenshead
family and numerous other county
dairymen highlighted the 54th
Annual Banquet.
With 194 full-year herds on test.
The herds of Robert Harwood,
Shippensburg and Asa and Keraut
Burkholder, Shippensburg, tied for
the first place in the category
“Most Improved Herd 1 ’ m but
terfat during the past three years.
Burk-Lea Farms, Cham
bersburg, topped two records in
the county. They won the over 100-
cow high herd record, milking 123
cows and producing 19,230 pounds
of milk and 689 pounds of fat. High
individual cow milk production
award also went to the Burk-Lea
Farms. Winning the production
awards was their #194 cow milking
31,570 pounds, at 3.0 percent and
946 pounds fat.
Fred and Dale Rice’s #ll4 cow
topped the list m fat production
with a record of 1164 pounds of fat,
21,750 milk at 5.4 percent.
Cows topping the 200,000 pounds
of milk.in Lifetime Production
included J. David and Kathryn
Long’s grade holstem' “Kay.”
Kay’s lifetime totaled 203,134
pounds of milk, 6,886 pounds fat m
11 lactations.
Michael Falanney’s cow #261
also topped the 200,000-pound
lifetime record with 223,055 pounds
of milk, 8,093 pounds fat, m 11
lactations.
With the record number of seven
herds producing over 700 fat,
Franklin County DHIA presented
rosettes to the dairymen. They
were: Ray and Stewart Hollen-
till corn withstands drought so well
shead; Frank Heberhg; Oakleigh
Farms; Kenneth Oliver; Blmer
and Frank Ressler; and Robert
Harwood.
On October 9, the Franklin
County DHIA completed fifty-four
years of production testing and
during those years has developed a
county of quality dairy herds.
In the county’s beginning years,
from 1928-32, only 443 cows par
ticipated in the program. These 443
cows average 7,351 pounds milk
and 298 pounds fat.
During 1981,. Franklin County
DHIA supervisors tested 13,751
cows and these cows produced an
average of 15,502 pounds milk and
580 pounds fat.
In fifty-four years Franklin
County dairymen doubled their
production of milk and fat.