taking dried corn off the cob

tn8n

Member
i like to grow some corn to supplement my chicken's and goat's feed through the winter. i just let it dry standing on the stalk and pick it by hand, and cut the stalks to sell for fall decorating.
i don't grow a very large amount so it's hard to justify buying something to get the dried corn off the cob (we call it a corn sheller around here not sure what it's really called) so i just do it by hand. after a hundred or so corn cobs my hands get pretty rubbed raw!
anybody know any homemade solutions for shelling corn? my hands thank you!
 
you should be able to find one of those IH or jd hand crank shellers, an IH would probably be less money,it would shell 100 ears like nothing, there were also some small belt driven units if you had alot more to do
 
i see those crank shellers a lot around here at antique shops, they seem to be collectables and the price usually reflects that. i guess i'll have to watch craigslist and flea markets for one.
i keep thinking there's got to be a way to make something like it at home, the ones i've seen were just a rotating plate with "teeth" on it that rotated near a stationary toothed plate.
 
Just toss the ears out there with the corn on them. Your chickend and goats will do the shelling for you.
 
Pair of gloves and a twisting motion of your hand will remove most of it but then chickens and goats do not mind eating it right off the cob and the goats will even eat part of the cobs. Yep got goats and chickens and have feed dried sweet corn that way and it is hard to find much of any cob left over
 
They tend to go a lot cheaper at farm sales, instead of collectables dealers.

There were also small little hand-crank deals that clamp on a box, to shell seed corn. That might work for you too.

--->Paul
 
Use a cob that is already shelled against an ear of corn to shell.Hold the ear of corn and with the cob ,( in the other hand ) starting at the butt end of the ear, push down on the kernels and work up the cob. Very easily done when you get the hang of it.

Judd in NEPA
 
keep at it. After a while your hands will toughen up.
Last year we would shell 4 or 5 bushel every couple of weeks to take in to be ground into goat feed.
We bought a hand cranked sheller but it was so messy we gave it up. Blew kernels all over the shed and you had to dig the cobs out of the shelled corn.
 
I have a corn sheller that looks just like the one on this link and it works great. I made a wooden box that holds about a bushel that the sheller clamps onto. Our kids think it is great fun to help out with the shelling. I'm shocked by the price of this unit, though. I bought mine from a guy in our antique tractor club for one tenth this amount. These new ones (and the one I have) are reproductions of units that have been around for many years. I once saw one that looked nearly identical labeled as a David Bradley which probably would have been from the 30's or 40's.

One disadvantage of a small sheller like this is that it obviously has no fan like larger units. This allows chaff from the cob to end up in your grain. For what I use it for this doesn't matter; our animals don't seem to mind!
Hand cranked corn sheller
 
that's great, that's exactly what i'd like to find. all the ones i've seen were much larger, made into a wooden "table," they kind of resemble an old singer foot powered sewing machine or something, i guess they had a box underneath to catch the corn.

the tractor club i belong to has a swap meet this weekend, i'll have to keep my eyes open and maybe i can find one.

thanks for all the replies!
 
I have seen pictures of a little metal rings with teeth inside it, that you, I guess, twist down over the ear to shell the kernels off. They were in magazine articles about making life easier for the 3rd world countries.
 
I'm betting you could find one of those like Brendan posted on eBay for not much, or a flea market/antique shop. No way would I pay $225 for one. It would be perfect for what you want to do though.
AaronSEIA
 

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