Figuring out ear corn yield

joepa

Member
Good Morning all,

So I've been thinking about putting out some corn next year to be picked as ear corn, no variety etc. picked out yet. I've been looking online but haven't found a good explanation on how to roughly figure out bushels per acre I should expect to yield. Most of the results I find are for shelled corn.

Thank you!
 
Hmmm, this one is going to be a real head scratcher. But shouldn't the yield be the same as all that shelled corn had to come off the same ears? Around here we always figured corn at 72 lbs for bushel of ear corn and 56 lbs for shelled.
 
Thank you! I'm sure I'm making this harder than it needs to be.. haha

When I was reading the online information there are good explanations showing counting kernels per ear and doing the math on the test area to show the number of
shelled bushels per acre. I'm more looking for, say I plant 10 acres at 3,000 seeds per acre giving me 30,000 plants and hopefully ears. Roughly how many
bushels will these 30,000 ears make? My thoughts when looking at shelled vs. ear per acre are the actual grain yield is the same but the volume is different, due
to the loss of the cob. Since I'm picking as ear corn I'm trying to figure out how big of a corn crib I need to build.
 
''I'm trying to figure out how big of a corn crib I need to build.''

Not very big if that's all your plant population is going to be. Try 22,000 to 27,000 per acre, depending on what part of the country you're in. You need to be figuring crates, not bushels of corn. Corn cribs sizes are figured in crates. A general rule of thumb is to figure about double. 1000 crate crib will shell roughly 500 bushels of shelled corn.

Here's an old post with the exact same question asked and answered.
Link
 
Try this link.

https://beef.unl.edu/estimating-bushels-corn-ground-counting-ears-prior-grazing-cattle#:~:text=An%208%2Dinch%20ear%20of,of%20corn%20can%20be%20estimated.
 
Thank you all for the links and information! It's definitely helpful and I appreciate it.

Sorry, typo and lack of proof reading. I meant to say 30,000 seeds per acre (just figuring high and for easy math). I've never heard a crib being rated in crates, around here I've always heard sizing in bushels. I'll do some homework. Thanks again!
 
Id never heard of the term crates for ear corn either. New one on me.

A bushel of corn is the same amount of yellow corn, on the ear or shelled.

The bu of shell corn should weigh about 56#, the bu of ear corn will weigh about 70# because of the weight of the cob.

Ear corn takes up about 40% more volume than shell corn, you might want to go 50% more volume as it packs after a while and shrinks. So do you measure early or late to get the ear corn volume......

Paul
 
I guess a crate of corn is like ''shucking''. Nobody can tell me what shucking is but what I can give them another name for what they're describing.
 
If you can't weigh it and measure the moisture you might estimate it by volume. One bushel = 1.24 cubic feet, or one cubic foot = 0.8 bushel.

We estimated that ear corn took twice the volume of shell corn, one bushel ear corn = 2.48 cubic feet, or one cubic foot = 0.4 bushel of ear corn.
 
Around this part of Central Siberia ''shucking'' meant breaking open a shock of bundles and snapping off the ears and removing the ''shucks''. actually the husks, and loading the ears on flat bed hay wagons, using potato crates to contain them. Thus the term ''crates''. I remember doing it in full moonlight. Fun was had by all. (;>))
 

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