Bushel of corn

First let me say I am not to worried about the weights so if I am a little off on my figures bear with me.

When I think of a bushel I think of this.
Its only a measure of volume.
Usually 5.5 to 7 dozen blue crabs depending on what size the crabs are.





From reading here I have learned a bushel of shelled whole corn is 56 lbs.
I realize the moisture content of the corn can change the weight.
So this tells me when I go to the feed store and buy a 50 lb bag of corn I am getting a little less than a bushel and will not quite fill this basket.

Now here is where I get confused.

If I go to the feed store and buy a 50 lb of cracked corn. Still a little less than 56 lbs and we did not add or subtract any thing so it should still be a little less than a bushel.
But how does cracking corn change the volume.
Will this 50 lb bag of cracked corn over fill the basket or be less than the whole corn because of less air space.
I'm thinking the basket will be less full.

Now we move to ear corn.
I'm picking corn out my garden or I go to the farmers market and buy a bushel of corn.
It is my understanding you guys figure corn on the cob in the amount it would take to make a bushel of shelled corn.
So we are talking may more than a bushel of ear corn by volume.

But lets convert it the other way.
If I got a bushel of husked ear corn by volume how much corn do I really have.
A third of a bushel by volume or 18 lbs of corn.

How about corn sold at the farmers market with most of the husk still on the ear.
Less than a quarter of a bushel of corn I can eat or maybe 10 lbs of corn.

I realize you may only be guessing at the answers because most of you do not figure corn this way.

Yes

Pretty much got it.

Not sure you have the weight of the bushel volume of ear corn right ThisTV it was closer to half than 1/3?

Anyhow, selling grain is odd we sell it by weight, but we price it by volume, and do a bunch of standard conversions to get from one to the other.

Sort of an odd thing.

Paul

Yes it would be a lot simpler if you guys just used weight. 11,000 lbs per act instead I harvested 200 bushel per acre but sold 11k lbs.

I was figuring the cob was about 2/3 of the volume of a ear but it might be closer to a half.

What got me thinking about this is they sell sweet corn by the bushel at the farmers market and I was trying to figure how much corn that really is if I shell it and can of freeze it.

I have always heard 1.5 cu ft per bushel of shelled corn, 2.5 cu ft per bushel of ear corn. Cracked corn takes up less space because there is less air.

a bushel of corn can also weigh in at 60lb or above or as little as 50lb or below. depends on the quality of corn!

In my neck of the woods, they sell sweet corn by the dozen. So in a nut shell, it is sold by the ear and not by the bushel.

I've been hauling shelled corn. They do 2 tests on the corn. One test is, they weigh a small volume of it to come up with a test weight. Then they do a moisture test for the second test. If necessary (high enough moisture), I presume they make an adjustment to the test weight. That's the gest of how it's done. I'm unfamiliar with conversion charts and scales when it comes to this. But I do know that the elevators like it at or below 15 percent moisture. They don't dock at 15 or under. But they do if over. That might be where the line is on thier moisture scale where it quits effecting the test weight (15 and lower). Don't know that fir sure. But there would have to be a line somewhere, where it is just light weight corn and not good quality corn, and moisture no longer having anything to do with it.

Ear corn was a little before my day. But I had the opposite idea on that. I thought a bushel of ear corn was a larger volume that would equal a bushel of shelled corn if it was shelled. It'd obviously take more volume and poundage of ear corn to come up with the same amount of shelled corn. So I always figured it was the other way. But, I could be wrong about that. Like I said, ear corn picking was before my day.

Ha! I was picking rocks the day we had corn conversion in high school. Explain this to a confused country boy. Why is that that bushel of shelled corn only fills that bushel basket 2/3 full?

Dry shelled corn is 56 LBS and ear corn is 70 LBS per bushel in a perfect world. I have hauled in off the field corn from 58LBS to 47LBs depending on the year and moisture in the corn. Some years guys plant over 100 day corn or a bit more and get burned with an early frost or poor growth and it comes off light and wet. The light corn is usually wet like in the close to 30 % moisture and will not dry down till January or later. Then the better years they get the 56plus with 18-24 moisture corn. I have only had a couple years in my life that we had corn in the 15 moisture range. As for the sweet corn deal it is sold by the ear here and probably works out the best for both.

How much does a bushel of crabs cost nowadays?

You are correct. A bushel of ear corn is 70-72 lbs, to make a 56 lb bushel when shelled. But that 70 lb bushel doesn't come close to fitting in a standard bushel basket, which is 1.25 cu ft. There is a special volumetric measurement for an ear corn bushel. Can't remember it off the top of my head. Long story short, ear corn is less dense than shell corn.

If you convert how much corn you are getting after
shelling and freezing it's likely you will shake your
head and buy corn converted into beef,pork or chicken
next time. Price per lb of sweet corn could be in lobster
range !

When people ask to buy a bushel of sweetcorn from me I just sell them a bag with 5 dozen in it. I think I read somewhere that five dozen is considered a bushel. We sell many bags like that for freezing corn for $20/bag. This year the biggest day we had orders for 22 bags, in addition to what we sold on the stand by the dozen.

Number 2s are $85 a bushel. Number 1s are $30 a dozen. These are live prices.

Already boiled number 2s are $25 a dozen.

Whole skinned gator ready to grill is $14 a lb average 16 lbs.

Live lobster are $15 each. Dont know size.

16/20 fresh shrimp are regularly $3.50. $2.99 if you buy 10 lbs or more. They were on sale yesterday for $2.50 a lb for 16/20 and $1.99 a lb for 21/25. They run that special on a week day about every 2 weeks or so this time of year.

Crawfish is a spring season so you cant get them right now or you will pay dearly for them.

All prices are at the local fish market. You might be able to get better prices buying straight off the boat.

I was trying to stay away from saying a dozen because ear size can be different. By saying a bushel we can agree on a unit size we can both agree on over the internet.

But since you guys want to talk dozens lets try this.

I come to you and buy 5 dozen ears. What you consider a bushel. I take it home and take the corn off the cob to save freezer space. I then pack this shelled corn into one lb freezer bags. How many bags of corn do I have??

It takes more space because there is more air. More smaller air spaces.

Dad got in on the tail end of picking ear corn by hand. But he is no longer here with us to ask.

I remember him talking about wagon boxes and measuring what's in wagon boxes to determine bushels. If I remember right, the old wagon boxes could roughly hold 100 bushels of shelled corn. And extra side boards were used for them to hold 100 bushels of ear corn.
If they were picking and cribbing corn right there on the same farm, they had to resort to this to determine bushels, since most farms did not have a scale to weigh the wagons.

You think you are confused? Try this, Corn is bought and sold in Canada, based on the Chicago market price per bushel in America dollars, then converted to Canadian dollars. But we only use the metric system for legal trade, so we have to convert farther into Kilograms. And a 1,000 Kg is a metric tone. Which weighs 2,200lb. Ayo, such a business!!

(quoted from post at 07:53:47 10/08/22)
I come to you and buy 5 dozen ears. What you consider a bushel. I take it home and take the corn off the cob to save freezer space. I then pack this shelled corn into one lb freezer bags. How many bags of corn do I have??

Click to expand...

You get what you get.
Ears could small, medium or large. Each has a different price.

A bushel of corn is supposed to be the amount of kernels that fill a bushel basket.

If it is still on the ear, it will be close to 2 bushels of volume, to get the bushel of actual corn.

He was asking about someone selling a bushel of ear corn with the cob counting as part of the bushel....... Which would -really- be about a half a bushel.

So it gets confusing fast.

Next we can talk about tons, tonnes, short tons, long tons, and imperial tons........

Paul