Bailed corn stalks

[mnmtranching]

There is going to be many thousands of head of stock cows fed baled corn stalks, wish I could get some right now.

This country is as dry as it gets, most of MN, ND and SD are short to very short soil moisture. Most of the nonirrigated corn is not going to make grain, and will be cut and baled or if its fenced cattle will be put in it.

I think it was 98 I feed about 200 tons of soybean hay out of ND, I was desparate running out of feed and hay was expensive. The soybeans didn't germanate evenly becouse of drought, to much green to combine, the august rain also brought in the weeds and foxtail, they cut it and baled.
It made very good feed.

mnmt

 

[Anonymous]

I have seen Corn Stalks baled and then soaked in malassis(sorry about spelling) so the cattle would eat it better. This man runs about 700 head or so of brangus mix cattle.

 

[jw]

It will rain again but we are so far in the hole this year, it will be next year before forage growth can possibly catch up.

My hay man didn't even get one cutting this year and didn't get one last year. He had to sell his new equipment this year in order for the bank not to repo it. He said if it didn't rain real soon that next year will be worse than this year. Kinda scary.

He usually sells and delivers haygrazer at 20.00 a roll. He can't even find us anything except alfalfa at 7.50 a bale.

This is about 50 miles east of Dallas.

The point being, Lammie and others in this area, if you can find hay you might be wise to buy extra for next year.

 

[joe]

If this corn is green, why not chop and bag it, or pack it and tarp it, as silage type feed. I just finished off a 2 year old bag of silage a few weeks ago, and it was good to the end. I don't know if it hasn't eared what the feed value is, but well eared silage is good feed.

 

[mnmtranching]

joe, the nonirrigated corn where I'm at is mostly about 2 ft tall and turning brown. not much tonage. Some of the later planted corn thats clean might be OK yet. When it started getting dry in late May I put in another 55 acres of 80 day RR corn. Its weedless, and we had .7 in rain on it Thurs. I checked it out yesterday, looks good. With all the hot weather a couple more rains and I will get a lot of silage. Our haycrop was less then 1/4 of normal so I need the feed bad.

mnmt

 

[joe]

now i feel bad. I just assumed there was alot of feed out there in the field. I talked to a guy by dubuque IA today who has had 10" of rain since May, best hay crop...etc. I have 6' + tall corn, but it is dry here too. Not to the emergency disaster state yet, but a rain woud be great. The sand spots are firing.

 

[sandblaster]

I am in Northern Peru right now on a deployment for the military. The area that I am working in resembles Iraq, mainly desert with extensive flood irrigation. Rice and corn are the main crops grown here.

Right now it is winter down here and every livestock owner is feeding their animals corn stalks, seems to be a staple. The livestock here (cows, horses, goats, donkeys. and sheep) are pretty sorry but seem to survive on little to nothing.

I guess corn stalks are better than nothing.

 

[cowtrek]

If this corn is green, why not chop and bag it, or pack it and tarp it, as silage type feed. I just finished off a 2 year old bag of silage a few weeks ago, and it was good to the end. I don't know if it hasn't eared what the feed value is, but well eared silage is good feed.

Mostly equipment deficiencies would be my guess. Not much silage done in this area. Only silage I've seen was a guy the other side of Wharton toward Garwood doing some bunker silage. Otherwise nearly everything here is put up as dry hay, except dairies and some big stocker outfits I guess. Be hard to find a silage cutter/bagger hauler or packer too.

I saw a lot of corn up near Shiner and Hallettsville that had grown between 3-4 feet high and had made nubbins, certainly not worth $3/gallon diesel to combine but with the rain we got up there last month had grown a whopping good crop of coloradograss and crabgrass in it nearly 3 feet tall in places; suppose it's scavenging off the fertilizer meant for the corn. I was lusting over those fields because if it were me, I'd cut that stuff in a heartbeat, let the grass dry down to 20% and bale it all. The grass should eliminate any risk of nitrate poisoning from the drought stressed cornstalks, the cows would eat the leaves and upper stalks with the grass and pick the whole ear corn out to boot. Can't get much better hay than that IMHO. I've baled whole ear corn before and other than making more noise as the ears bounce through the pickup and baler roller it worked really well. Cows loved it. They won't usually eat the hard fibrous root end of the stalk but everthing above the ear and all the leaves usually disappear. We roll them out so any stalks left behind rot down rapidly.

There's some soybeans near here that look pretty bad, thinking about talking to the guy about baling those. I baled soybeans of my own in 96 after the cotton crop failed. We had Trifluralin and Cotoran down already and I wasn't sure that sorghum-sudan would even germinate or grow, but soybeans can tolerate it. We hoped we might even make a bean crop and salvage part of the year anyway, but we flat planted it so we could bale if it didn't make grain. It was almost too late when we planted so the grain part didn't work out; maybe 10-15 bushels to the acre I'd have guessed but they were 2-3 feet tall and lush with some escaped Johnsongrass in it and a little crabgrass and so we cut it all and baled it. We put it in sleeves because we had to store it outside and even two years later, those cattle would turn down fresh bahia mixed hay and RUN to those soybean bales, even though they were kinda ratty by then. They loved it!

If you've got plenty good hay, that's great and glad for ya, but if you don't and need hay don't turn your nose up too quick at some of this 'poor man's hay' because it can get you by, even surprise you. Just don't pay alfalfa prices for it. Good luck! OL JR

 

[mitchwi]

Last weekend they were talking about some of the local harder hit areas.... corn silage right now, they say will be lucky to get $7 a ton because of the corn content so low.

 

[samm]

we put the first corn stalk hay out today, this is first corn stalk we ever fed. we also put out a roll of last years hay, when we left they were still on the roll of last years hay, they better develope a taste for corn hay, is all i can say. the pastures are all but gone, but we did get a whole 1/4 in of rain yesterday, i aint complaining, cuz any is better than none. we were happy to get the corn stalk hay, with that we should make it through the winter now, and as sad as that sounds i see empty pastures that had cattle in them a few weeks ago, and hear people saying that they are about to be out of hay soon, but are trying to hold on to what they got, i dont know what thier plans are, but i sure feel bad for them. the people that we bought our corn hay from used a brush hog with the back cut out of it, and pulled a rake right behind it, he couldnt get to far ahead of the baler cuz he said the corn stalk blew too bad. in the past i had never really paid any attention to how they did it, just thought 'thats bad that they have ran out of hay and are having to use corn stalks' I guess i will have a bite of my own words along with that hay stalk please. :roll:

samm

 

[BC]

I heard a cattle buyer from close to Corsicana say this about feeding corn stalks - "A cow can live 3 days longer on nothing than she can on corn stalks". Granted, they have been used up north for years as a low cost roughage. Many people buying them this year do not know that they have to be supplemented to meet the nutritional needs of their cattle.

 

[tytower]

I heard a cattle buyer from close to Corsicana say this about feeding corn stalks - "A cow can live 3 days longer on nothing than she can on corn stalks". Granted, they have been used up north for years as a low cost roughage. Many people buying them this year do not know that they have to be supplemented to meet the nutritional needs of their cattle.

he must have been suuum clown
probably bought the meat for a circus and knows all about cattle
Obviously some food is better than none and a cow will eat what it likes so if they eat it rather than just sample it then you can't go wrong.

 

[msscamp]

I heard a cattle buyer from close to Corsicana say this about feeding corn stalks - "A cow can live 3 days longer on nothing than she can on corn stalks". quote]

Nutritional value of corn stalks:

http://extension.missouri.edu/agconnect ... -99-10.htm

There is also the factor that, following harvest, there are a lot of whole or partial cobs left in the field that still have corn on them. I'm thinking whoever made that comment didn't have a clue what he was talking about.

 

[Arkieman]

Digging up an old post here, but I was thinking of growing a little corn and baling it ears & all. Taking the bales to feed grinder and combining it with some bran & minerals for feed. Do you think this will work? Someone said that when you baled the stalk (even when dry) that it would get too hot and spoil. This didn't sound right to me, but we're not in corn country and there's usually alot of mis-information out there....

 

[preston39]

Arkieman,

We have cut and ground stalk,ear and all. Good feed/filler. We usually cut after first frost and stalk is relatively dry but, has some moisture. We add our oun mixture of soy meal and alfalfa hay in the grind and feed the ration within 3-4 days. We have not stored it for any longer.

Also we have harvested the ears and cut and baled the residue and ground it into a ration with same mix. We have also fed it from the bale.

The animals love it and do well.

 

[Arkieman]

Preston, do you think it will store? I don't have a grinder/mixer and would have to have an outside guy do it, so I would have to have it done all at once.

 

[preston39]

Yes.

So long as the stalk is cured mostly with moisture content low. Keep in mind as the dry corn and cob is ground it will absorb some of the moisture in the stalk. The total moisture content is where the problem could be.