Picking corn

I need some opinions here. I am in Central
Minnesota and had the local Feed Store test the
moisture on my corn. It tested between 21 and
23%. I use a corn picker and store it in the wire
corncribs with a cone top. Last year I waited until it's
stayed below freezing to pick my corn but it shelled
so bad. I am wondering if it will keep in the crib if I
pick it now or am I better off waiting until it gets
colder? Another option I have is to fill my wagons
and store them in the shed until it gets colder and
get that much off the field now. Just wondering if
that would be an option so that it wouldn't get rained
on in the crib or is the moisture to high, is it going to
heat up? Thank you in advance for your help!

I wouldn't leave it in the wagon. You won't get any air flow. If you have good vents in the cribs,you'll be OK at 21%.

Lots put in at 25% or even higher.

I always heard to drop a couple ears in the stock tank, if they float, start picking. Chris

I've heard up to 30% moisture will keep in a corn crib as long as you got air flow around it.

If you do not mind another opinion I would feel safe at 20 percent with the expected daytime temp 55 degrees or below and below 40 at night. Also, a corn picker with a deck plate type is the way to go as I do not know of any varieties that work with the older style pickers. You are pretty much limited to a JD 300 picker which is a good picker but not cheap. You are probably between a rock and a hard place if you only have 5-10 acres to pick as a good 300 picker will easily be above 3,000 dollars and 5,000 or more if really nice. How many acres do you pick and could you pick up custom work where your are at to upgrade to a 300 picker? I'll also mention that with the 300 that the head is detachable and you can go from wide row to 30" using the same base machine.

I have heard 5 ears in a pail and if 3 float your safe. Hate to have it spoil! I have not tried this but out of curiosity I will tomorrow!

I have a new idea 324 picker with a 327 12 roll husking bed. We are the only ones in our area to pick ear corn anymore. Everyone has gone to combining. We only do 5 to 7 acres of corn each year. We use it to creep feed our small end beef calves through the winter. It does a pretty good job but never had it shell as bad as last year.

It shelled bad because it was probably drier. There is a point somewhere, were it is cheaper to pay a bit of drying charge, or cribbing in your case, than it is to loose corn in the field due to shelling loss. Ben

You are kind of stuck then. As stated before the seed companies are generally not breeding corn for picking using the older style pickers. Some varieties have field loss issues as the corn drops in to the teens moisture-wise with modern combine heads. I suppose if you had several thousand dollars burning a hole in your pocket a picker upgrade would be easy to swallow. If your field losses were around 50 percent which is not unheard off then on a 150 bushel dried shelled yield basis per acre would equal 75 bushels multiplied by 7 acres equals 525 bushels then multiplied by 3.50 per bushel equals 1837.50 dollars. Over ten years that would be 18,375 dollars so a picker upgrade does not look absurd even figuring it will need maintenance over that ten year period. So maybe you are not as stuck as I first thought. Further, a clean field means a far smaller issue with volunteer corn.

Just depends on how warm it gets after you crib it.If you can take the shelled corn out[most elevators have a plate that can be unbolted with a grate underneath to drop the shelled corn down and another grate on the bottom side to let the shelled corn drop into whatever you want][A old steel bath tub works good] or have a way to keep the shelled corn out of the center of the pile will help. Do you have the new idea picker? If you do there are a couple of things to check that might help with shelling.

Drop 6 in the tank...if 5 float, start pickin.

Even the new combine heads shell corn. I went past a field that was harvested around sept 14th and I'm sure the moisture was over 25percent. Corn that was lost by the head is in the 4th leaf stage! The field is green! I had to stop and take a double look.On the rollers and on the steel husking rollers of your new idea there might be some flat steel[about the size of a dime with ridges]pushed into a wooden dowel that can be pulled out with a pliers.If it does try pulling some out and see if that helps. Hope this helps.Good luck

Very true but a picker with deck plate type header can only help reduce field loss to some degree. In my example if the field loss due to his old machine was only 25 percent he could still pay for the upgrade and greatly reduce the amount of volunteer corn. As long as the growing season is not too far out of the norm a good seed salesman knows what products need a "timely harvest" as they can not be left out for long and products that could wait for later in the season. I would feel confortable cribbing corn at 20 percent moisture and would like the flexibility of a deck plate type header in case there was a wet spell when the corn was at the ideal seed moisture and had to wait.

I think storage in the wagons is a bad idea, seems prone to molding.

The reason for corn cribs is to air dry the corn. So picking the corn and leaving it in the wagons is NOT the thing to do. There is little air movement in a wagon. So your high moisture corn will rot/mold in the wagon. The little bit of weathering you see in the crib is a small percentage of the total weight in the crib. The rain that would blowing will not raise the moisture content very much at all. The moisture content is the INTERNAL moisture not what is on the out side of the kernel. Once the internal moisture is low it is darn hard to make it wet again.

When I was still picking I started as soon as the corn was under 20%. IF the ear where shelling to bad I would pick in the evening and mornings. This the husk was a little tighter and would help for less shelling. Adjust your picker's snapping roll spacing. Watch your speeds. I almost never ran at PTO speed, usually much slower. Your ground speed will effect the shelling to. Picking when it is too dry and frozen will increase the butt shelling.

New idea may have had the picker market but the snapping roll just about always shelled the butt some. Allis Chalmers and JD both had pickers that had stripper plates above the snapping rolls. This reduced the butt shelling to about zero.

So your basically doing the WRONG things when picking corn. Pick it while there is still some moisture in the ear to reduce butt shelling. THEN crib it ASAP to allow air flow to let it naturally dry. Try to minimize any shelled corn in the crib. It will limit air flow. This is why most chain elevators had screens/grates to allow the shelled corn to fall out.

It will store in the crib at that moisturebif the crib has the center column in it. Those round cribs should have about a 12-18" square wooden column so the air circulates better. Just 4-2x4s with 1x6 boards nailed on with spaces about 1" between. Make sure its capped so it don't fill when you fill the crib but vents too.

What kind of corn is it? Seems to me its harder to pull the ear off the stalk with the new BT varieties. The shank is thicker and healthier. The harder it comes off the stalk, the better chance of shelling in the head.

Pa always said when the ears are hanging down you can put it in the crib.

The thing I would worry about is even if you got the jist of the current variety with the old picker that the seed company would discontinue the old variety then you have to learn the hard way all over again. The seed companies are good at discontinuing varieties that work for me in terms of adaptability to the soil and so forth. The Amish here do not even fool with pickers as the losses are too much for even them. The NK rep from back in the 1970's maintained that the research went away during the early 1970's in terms of varieties that worked well with the older pickers. By the time I was old enough to care which was the late 1970's he was down to holdovers to sell to his picker customers even though those varieties no longer were leaders in yield when figured on a dry shelled per acre basis. When the Mennonites started showing up in mass they were still using NI pickers but again the losses were too much to sustain so they went to an alternative. Most were planting small grains so they went and got three or four row combines as those machines had fallen out of favor thus lowering their retail price.

If I recall Pa said crib corn should be 22%. Before probes and testers his method was to pick random cobs and throw 5 of them in a bucket of water. He did a couple of water tests and if 3 of the 5 cobs floated we picked.

Never heard of anything like that in my 73 years. We would always take a few ears and twist, if you could feel or hear the kernels crackling then it was ready. And the wire cribs are bad about corn not keeping, If you want higher moisture ears to keep use a wood crib 4' wide but not over 5' wide with 1x4 siding boards spaced 1" apart. Years ago neighboring farmers always started picking while the stalks were still full green so you know there was moisture, this was before the stay green stalk varities and they had 4' cribs with no spoilage. They started picking just past the dent stage.

I pick corn with a Ford 601 side mount picker, Dad bought one new in 64, I started running it in 65, we custom picked our neighbor hood because we had the only picker around, just bought our third one that's been sitting in a barn for over thirty years, looking forward to getting it in the field.
Like MNfarmboy83 we raise 6-10 acres per year to grind and creep feed calves. The snapping rolls on the 601 are on top of each other at about 75 degrees so they don't shell as bad as pickers with snapping rolls laying flat like combine heads.
I've never owned a combine and don't know what a deck plate type picker head is.
IMO if one was having 25-50% shelling they waited till the corn was way to dry or the picker needs some serious adjustments or repair, I get upset if I see more than 10%
Never used a moisture tester on ear corn, always did the cob twist or float method and store in a wood crib, dad's old crib had a concrete floor and that was the only place we'd have mold.
Planning on building a elevated wood crib with removable center planks and a auger under the floor to convey corn out cutting down on shovel work.

It's cold now, get picking!

Your only trouble will be the center core of the wire crib gets less airflow. And it will get packed up with the kernels and chaff where the elevator dumps down the middle of the crib. These kernels pack about solid and no airflow.

If you have a vertical wire or wood tunnel up the middle of the crib to let air get in there, or if you are -very- good at screening the ear corn to keep kernels out, or if you start feeding out the middle of the crib right away to keep that solid core moving, then you can put near 30% moisture corn in a crib in our colder climate.

But you really need to manage that core where the kernels end up packing in.

do not try to store 20+ moisture corn in a wagon with no air flow. That would be bad.

Paul

Thanks for all the help guys! I got a lot of good information! I did end up waiting on picking. Like I said, it tested at 21 - 23%. I did the float trick this morning and only 1 cob out of 6 floated. Going to give it a few days and try again.