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CORN

Ear corn or shelled? Ear corn,if it slides out of the gravity box without a lot of poking and proding,it's dry enough.
 
Depends on where you are. There are a lot of them around most everywhere with vines growing up over them.They can be had for the price of scrap. One tip on that ear corn for picking,if the kernels look waxy and you can break in to them pretty easy with your thumb nail,probably too wet. I generally run out and have to pick new corn to grind before I start cribbing,so if it keeps OK for 3-4 days after I grind it,it's dry enough to crib.
 
Boy, this is kind of a learn-from-experience thing, but if the kernel is so hard that you worry about breaking a tooth when you chew it, it's maybe 15% or lower. That's about the only way I can explain it. Jim
 
Walk through the field and pick off 10 ears at random. Pull off the shucks and dump those 10 ears into the stock tank or another large vessel of water. If 7 of those 10 ears float, the corn is dry enough to pick and put in the crib.

Anyhow, that is how the old timers did it, and it seemed to work quite well for them.
 
It appears rrlund,that you never picked any or much of any ear corn in these 350 BU.and bigger Gravity wagons.NO ear corn of any Moisture comes out of them easy.For 20 yrs.I picked and cribbed 100 to 200 acres a yr.(landlords share,I shelled mine) This post is in good fun and my Family was never so glad to lose a farm because of the weather you had to work in.
 
Break several ears in half. Flip some kernals over. Take a sharp point, like a ball point pen. Poke into the back side of the kernal. There should be no milk down near the tip.

Bite a few kernals, they should almost crack when you bite into them.

Best bet is to shell off several ears, mix the kernals up in a dry plastic bucket and take the sample to town to the local elevator.


Gene
 
I've usually found that shell corn that tests above 54 pounds per bushel is generally in the 16% moisture range and safe to crib
 
24% should be good to go. In cold weather - here in MN - I've gotten by with 30% moisture when we have a bad fall & it don't dry down. But then I get it fed away by March or April, it is chancing it over 24%. If you are in a warm climate in fall, you might want it a little drier.

Someone said 18% - can't keep the kernals on the cob at that low a moisture, better be done by the time it hits 20%!

--->Paul
 
If you want to get technical about moisture content, you can use the poor-man's moisture tester: your microwave and a sensitive scale. I'm sure if you google it, you will find instructions. Make sure to put a glass of water in your microwave while you do it though, or you could damage it.
 
In my opinion, the only good way tell the moisture is with a good meter. Any co-op or grain elevator should test a sample without charge. It's been a long time since I picked ear corn, but it seems to me that with a well ventilated crib, we thought it was safe to crib corn at 20% moisture.
 
If you are picking for ear corn to store in a PROPERLY BUILT corn crib, in random parts of the field pick batches of 5 cobs. If in each batch, 3 of the 5 will float in a tank of water, it is dry enough to pick. Wayne
 
Don't know where you could get crib wire (doubt if they still make it). You might try fastening 3 hog panels together to make a 15-ft. diameter crib. I know the openings are larger than desirable, but it's a thought.
 
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