Round Bales of Cornstalks

This fall I have seen several fields of cornstalks baled into round bales. Are these used for bedding?

I'm feeding mine to beef cows. Drop them right in the feeder. Have to take the grapple about once a week and clean out the large stalks that they don't eat,but they clean up all the laeves and husks and the smaller upper part of the stalks. I chop enough of them to fill the top of the barn with loose stalks too. I throw them down to the calves for bedding,but they rummage through them and eat a lot of them too.

most guys around here use them for beding.

Can be fed, used for bedding, or here in Central MO sold to a plant that grinds and peletizes them and resells as a fuel to electric plants(sounds real efficient huh?).

I'll be feeding alot to the cows this winter, they seem to prefer it over hay sometimes. Problem this year is the darn stalks are so wet I am worried about rotting bales if I bale certain feilds, which also happen to be the ones with the most leaves and husk's

Have seen a number of fields of baled cornstalks around central Michigan this fall. We feed cornstalks from a rather extensive field of sweetcorn to our sheep from time corn is too mature to eat, until mid or end of October. They like it!

Just wondered do you shred/spread the stalks as they come out of the combine or just let it come out in windrows??

When I was a teen in the late 40' we used a silage cutter to shred and we used it for bedding.
I think they had different knives for shredding the corn stalks. Back then they cut and shocked all the corn stalks by hand. Then when the corn was dry enough we would husk it by hand. Then tie up all the corn fodder for use later. If it was done the hard way we always seem to do it that way. Had to gather all the ears of corn and dump them in an old truck bed then used a scoop shovel for unloading into the crib. Hal

Yes they are used for bedding. But, every bale that you take off the ground you are taking $10 - $15 worth of fertilizer off with it too.

Round here if the corn is combied early and we have a little rain crabgrass grows real quick. If you have a stalk field with alot of grass in it the cows will eat the bale and push the ring over and lick the ground.

Dave

Cornstalks do not go through the combine, the ear is stripped off of the stalk.

Here in MN typically you run a stalk shredder (big hammer mill type of shreader) over the field, busting up the stalks into foot or shorter pieces. Rake it into windrows & round bale it. In a good year works well, in a tough year that is the worst job you can have.

There are other options for prepping the stalks for baling - some just rake the field & try to get more husks & leaves than stalks; some balers have chopper heads instead of pickups and you just run through the cornfield, chopping directly into the baler; rotory (batwing) mowers to chop; special choppers with backboards that form a windrow as you chop; even running a hay conditioner over the stalk field; there are special corn heads that cut up the stalks as you combine, only need to rake after; and so on.

Used for bedding & for feed, about equally here in MN. Make good feed for animals that need roughage & not high protien; make cheap bedding if you need lots.

Some feel you remove a lot of nutrients, but it's a big plus if you place the manure back onto the fields you take the stalks off of - cornstalks tie up a lot of N as they decompose, and so you lose fertilizer value for a year after corn - if you haul the stalks back to the field as manure (either eaten or bedding mixed) they will rot down & give up the nutrients right away. Better to feed them or use them for bedding & return to the field in 6-12 months, than to try to decompose them right out in the field!

--->Paul

Back in the 1940's when I was growing up on the farm we used to cut the corn with a binder, shock it, and then after it had dried good in the shock, we husked/shred it with a husker/shredder which was a stationary sort of machine like a grain thresher. The ears of corn were snapped/husked cleanly off to be cribbed and the corn stalks, leaves, and ear husks were chopped up pretty well with the machine and the "fodder" was blown in a mow in the barn and used to feed our dairy cows once a day and what they didn't eat was put through the stanchions while the cows were outside and used to supplement the small grain straw bedding then forked out in the straw/fodder/manure residue twice a day. The manure was spred on the fields that were going to be put into corn on first priority and given a good covering usually just before we plowed them in the spring. We very seldom planted corn in the same field two years in a row and usually the corn ground was a sod or stubble field following a few years of hay and/or a year or two of small grain.
But...about 1950 we started picking the corn in the field and disking down the stalk residue before plowing it the following spring, and sometimes we "corned" the same field two years in a row until we "discovered" soybeans and worked them into our crop rotation......along with abundant applications of anhydrous ammonia and/or 28% nitrogen liquid fertilizer.