did any elevators ever buy ear corn?

I know this is a stupid question but I have always wondered if any grain elevators ever bought ear corn and shelled it themselves?

Not sure if they bought it but ours would grind cob corn and mix it into our feed ration.

Not 'here' in my lifetime. I believe they did long ago, but that was for feed grinding & mixing I believe.

--->Paul

I don't know if they ever took delivery of ear corn, but our local elevator used to bring their sheller out and shell it out of the crib into the truck to haul back to town.

I am told years ago that some elevators here took in ear corn but had a sheller on site they ran it through.

ours would buy it but they did not store it because of storage space but they had to have if for farmers that were short on feed and back then they ground the cob and all for cow feed when a farmer needed it they sent out the truck with a shovelvater on it we sold a lot to the Co-op

Our local elevators bought ear corn into the late sixties. Diversified farming still going strong at that time in this area.

Our elevators did. They shelled the corn and then burnt the cobs. They had a huge stack that carried the smoke up and away.

Local elevator did until they closed their doors.....sometime in the '90s. They had a hammermill and ground a lot of feed for the hobbyists/part time farmers.

They used to shell it here up until about the 70s.They would grind it cob and all for feed up into the 90s.Probably still would if as many people had cattle as back 30 or 40 years ago.

They bought ear corn and shelled it. They blew the cobs into a silo and burnt them, or put in a truck and huled back to the farm. Some had cribs to store ear corn to make feed.

both elevators close to me buy ear corn. the andersons' at maumee ohio bought probably a couple million bu. a year untill around four years ago.

At our local elevator as soon as you dumped it into the pit, it want straight to the corn sheller and shelled. Always had a pile of cobbs outside for anyone who wanted them. Probably quit taking ear corn in the late 60's

Elevators here all had shellers until the early'70s. Then as the shellers wore out they were not maintained or replaced. I only know of 1 that still has a functional sheller. There is now a good demand for cobs in the area from large greenhouse operations that have alternative fuel boilers for heat. They buy all the cobs from the seed corn production.

We owned a pretty good sized feed mill operation in those days and did the shelling with a Minneapolis Moline portable sheller. It was the best corn sheller on the market in those days. Had four wheels. We'd pull it out to the farm with the truck, hook it on to the farmer's tractor (PTO) and start shoveling. The elevator on the sheller put the shelled corn in the truck, the cobs were left at the farm and then we'd leave with a full truck and the sheller behind. Slick as all get out. The farmers liked the cobs to start fires with. If they had a lot of cobs, they burned them as fuel in those big old wood/coal furnaces. That sheller just ran and ran. All we'd do is pump some grease into it. It was the best little corn sheller ever built. Then the picker/shellers came along and then combines.

I have to add that the feed we ground for dairy and beef cattle was usually a 50/50 mix of oats(sometimes mixed with wheat) and ear corn mixed with various supplemernts such as linseed oil meal, soybean oil meal, calcium, minerals, salt, etc. Farmers didn't bother shelling corn for cattle. Hogs and poultry were a different story. It was 100% shelled corn for poultry and hogs. We would buy shelled corn to make up our own brand of hog feed and chicken feed for small farms. State licensed and copyrighted, we called it "Farmstead" brand. Ground real fine and mixed in a rotary mixer. That was the only reason we bought shelled corn because most of the grain grown around here was fed to the local cattle on the farm where it was grown. Farmers around here just didn't grow "cash crops".

I was amazed at the amount of response, thanks to all. When my dad dairied we picked just about everything, dad had a crib on the grainery and a metal one and when they were full he made a pile with the grain elevator and we ground that first. We had a 324 NI on a 970 Case. I used to pick the crib full on my old farm as it kept the wind out of the grainery, drying ear corn smells good. When I was really young Dad used to have the elevator come out and grind on the farm, they had a vac that worked good for getting oats out of the middle bins, sounded like a swarm of bees. Then the elev. a mile away started renting out a Lorenze grinder/mixer. Finally in 1974 Dad bought a new 1150 IH that ground countless batches. This year I picked some earcorn to feed calves this winter with my 77 Oliver and a NI 1-row, I have a really nice Gehl belt drive hammer mill. Dad always ground ear corn with a 3/8 screen so we never had big chunks of cob in the feed, I have a 1/2" in the Gehl and it pulverizes the cob and makes nice feed.

Ours did. Had a built in sheller on site, shelled ear corn for grain, for chickens, pigs. We ground ear corn, cobs and all for cows. Cobs from shelled corn went into overhead storage bin, and farmers used them for bedding especially for poultry. Can remember my dad going over to get a trailer full for our brooder coop, just before we'd get the new hatched chicks in the early spring. Sure wish we could get the ground corncobs now. Would make wonderful bedding for our rabbit pans. We used to get free sawdust from a local sawmill, but they changed ownership (grandson,) and he let it be known that sawdust was going to be sold to a concern that made pelletized wood for pellet wood furnaces.

Of course elevators used to buy ear corn. There are hundreds of industrial uses for the cobs. Andersons in Ohio used to pay a premium for ear corn because they needed the cobs. EPA shut them down claiming they put too much dust in the air.

Jerry

Mine still does. This was taken July of "08. Getting a batch of hog feed ground

The overhead where the antlers are hanging is cob storage. It"s dumped into open top trucks to be hauled away.

Ron

The sheller always came to the farm around here. There probably were some elevators that shelled corn years ago but it was before my time and I'm 57. I'm going to ask my dad this question when he comes out for coffee this PM. Jim

You go back into the 1950,s and before corn was picked and air dried in cribs. The ear corn was the loaded and hauled to the elevators where they shelled. In this area every elevator had a huge pile of cobs that were free for the taking. Best place to get your red worms for fish bate.

A coupla local farmers put up a bunch of wire cribs and they are all full of ear corn. I would say that Anderson's in Toledo will be where the corn will be sold.
The one large farmer was picking with two large self propelled pickers and grain cart sized wagons behind. They have to be getting extra for the cobs to justify the investment.

Our local elevator in Reading, MI bought ear corn until about 2000. I used to get a $.10 to $.12 per bushel con premium because they had a market for the cobs. We used ground cobs in a tumbler as a polishing medium in the plant where I work. New owners removed the sheller then. Nearest place I know of now is 50 miles away in Topeka, IN.
Paul

In the 1940's and 1950's I remember the Elevators who shared owners at Wedron and Dayton ILL maintained Cribs and purchased Ear Corn from Farmers. I think they were in the Feed processing buisness also so the Ear Corn fit well.

I feel old based on a lot of the comments here.I am in my 50's. First real off the farm job as a senior in high school was at Winchester Milling Co. I drove aton druck out to get ear corn to bring in to be ground for feed and then hauled the sacked feed back out. Loaded that truck with a scoop shovel the elevator was only taken out with the big truck single axle dump 14' box. We would go out together in the spring and summer to haul in from the cribs. Load the big truck he would leave to the mill and I would load the ton truck and head in was ok when first starting a crib a lot of shoveling as it got down. I was expected to be back in time to help shovel the big truck and shovel the ton truck by myself.
Also delivered coal. seemed like I got all the particuler ones that wanted the coal load with a coal fork by hand and then watered down even when it was 0 degf. Had the privelage of climbing in the coal windows of houses to move the coal back as some people would almost run out then order enough to fill it up to the ceiling so as to pay less delivery charge. One old lady gave me a pan of brownings and I was foolish enough to leve in the mixing house till lunch wasn't much left for me by then.
Ole well I was young and could do it then can't do it now
Ron

Our S.E. Nebraska farm, was 200 acres and Dad was proud of the fact that it was all “hog tight”. This meant all fences were good enough to hold hogs. In the early forties there, most of the corn was not picked with mechanical pickers. Much was done by hand and thrown into a wagon, pulled by a “team”. The team would follow the rows, stopping and starting on oral command. The wagon box was built for shelled grain, which weighing about twice by volume, what corn on the cob did and could carry a larger volume of ear-corn. The “box” had side-boards on it to accommodate the volume. A right-handed guy would probably walk between two rows on the left side of the wagon, picking both of them. He grabbed and held the ear, while still on the stalk, with his left hand and had a small metal hook strapped to the heel of the right thumb. The hook was used to separate the husks, near the stem of the ear. He rotated the ear breaking it off the stem before it was tossed into the wagon. The opposite side of the wagon had a “bang-board” which was higher than the rest of the wagon and kept the ears from being over thrown. The end gate was removed from the wagon and replaced with a shovel board. This was the width of the wagon, hinged at the bottom, maybe 60” inches long. This folded down and was suspended by chains on each side, level with the wagon floor. When the shovel board was folded down, it filled with ears that were scooped into the crib, making room for you to go up on it and scoop off the load.

One of those early forties war years we had 90 acres of corn, some of it made 90 bushels, the best yield ever at that time. Most of the acres were hogged down. This means the hogs picked it themselves. This paid off some the debt left over from the 30’s.

One of our neighbors did custom shelling with a machine he pulled from farm to farm and powered with his “H”. Late 40’s, he bought a new machine, it was mounted on and powered by a hew Dodge truck. The ear corn would dry down on it’s own while stored, in the well ventilated cribs. Then it was shelled before time for the next crop to come in. No one we knew had dryers in those days. Some early mechanical pickers were intended to just get the ear off the stalk and into the wagon. Most of the husks were still on the ears and in the wagon. Later husking beds were added to remove the husks and leave them in the field. The first picker-sheller I saw in the early 50’s, was a Case, two row pull type. It had a high storage container that when full, fed by gravity into a wagon or truck.

In the ear corn days, if you were feeding it in the hog lot, you would let them shell it as they ate it and there was not much corn wasted. If you feed cattle you would run the entire ear through the hammer-mill and feed it that way. With the cattle eating the cob as well as the kernels, it served as roughage and less hay was required. If the corn was shelled it might be fed to poultry or shipped.

The local elevator sure did.Raised a trap door in the floor of the driveway of the mill and corn was dumped in a pit with a large screw in the bottom of it. The ear corn first went into a crusher then into a sheller. Ear corn for cow feed was ground, cob and all. It was a common practice to fill mudholes with the cobs around here. Most elevators didn't like to grind cobs as the shucks would plug up the grinder screens pretty easily.

RE: pulling corn by hand...........somebody had to pull the down rows, the ones the wagon had rode over. I came along at the tail-end of that era and when I complained about my back hurting from spending the time bent over at the waist pulling the down rows, was told, "Boy, you don't even have a back; you've just got some gristle."

Absolutely. Sometime in the early 1990s I remember Dad and I followed my uncle up to the elevator in Grafton with one of the old pickups. Pulled two gravity boxes with a Massey 165. Usually it would go in one of the cribs but they ran out of room that year. Must have been 1994 or 95. Very cold drive for my uncle that day.