HARVEST UNDER WAY
Dr. Greg Roth
Penn State Agronomy
Associate Professor
Another com harvest season
is upon us and it is time to plan
accordingly.
This year we have a good
crop and reasonable prices, so it
will be particularly important to
do a careful job when harvest
ing to capture the yield and pre
serve the quality of the crop that
we have in the field. A number
of issues will be important to
consider in harvesting this
year’s crop.
For many farms, this year’s
crop will be large, so plans
should be made now for storing
and marketing the crop. Hope
fully most producers have con
sidered this before now and
have plans in place. Field scout
ing should also be completed
now and those fields with
potential standability problems
should be harvested first.
During the last two weeks, I
visited a number of fields that
had gray leaf spot that could
contribute to poor standability.
To assess standability, squeeze
the stalk to check to stalk inte
grity. Fields with stalks that
crush easily will likely have the
most standability problems.
Another problem to scout for
are ear molds. In a few fields,
bird damage and wet weather
have contributed to sporadic
' ear mold problems. Planning to
harvest these fields early, pre
ferably for shelled com.
Removing the fines and cobs
will help to reduce the potential
for mold problems in feed.
Crop maturity is key situa
tion to monitor this fall. Some
fields that were planted late will
be at risk to mature before frost.
Grain development should be
monitored and if the crop will
not reach the dent stage by frost
then a silage or high moisture
ear com harvest option should
be considered because of the
potential for low test weights
and slow dry down.
High moisture earlage is a
good option for immature com
since the cobs will contribute to
the yield and at higher moisture
contents are digested well by
ruminants. The exception to
this would be when the cob and
grains show signs of mold.
Then, harvesting as high mois
ture shelled com has been
shown to reduce potential mold
and mycotoxin contamination.
Monitoring crop moisture is
essential to maintain the quality
of the high moisture com or ear
com in storage. Common mis
takes are for high moisture com
Com Talk, Lancaster Farming, Saturday, October 12, 1996—Page
to be harvested too dry and ear
com to be harvested too wet
In general, high moisture
shelled com should be greater
than 26 percent moisture except
in sealed silos, where it should
be greater than 22 percent for
adequate storage. Ear com
should preferably at 21 percent
grain moisture or less, but can
be stored slightly wetter if
stored in narrow bins or bins
with’ air drying capability..
When storing high moisture
com, remember to fill fast, pack
well, and seal well. Avoid leav
ing loads out overnight or,
worse, making piles of wet com
that will not be ensiled quickly.
Slow filling can cause die crop
to heat before the ensiling pro
cess starts. Heating reduces the
quality of the feed and allows
yeasts and molds to proliferate.
This causes layers in the silo
that will be lower quality and
will spoil more readily during
feedout Warm temperatures
during silo filling will make
wet com heat and spoil more
quickly.
While harvesting, also note
harvest losses. The rule of
thumb for harvest losses is that
20 kernels in a ten square foot
area represents 1 bushel per
acre. Ear com losses can be
estimated by counting the
dropped ears in a 1/lOOth acre
row length (two 30-inch rows
87 feet long). Each full size ear
in this sample, area represents
one bushel per acre.
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