A quick look wouldn't hurt

I've been popping in and out of a few corn fields this week, and there has been some chatter in the country side about odd things happening in the field. A few things:

Cobs on the Ground: yes in some areas there is some cobs dropping. It is not as much variety specific as it is area specific. It seems to be much more prevalent in areas that were very drought stressed. If you are seeing some, as a rule of thumb on a 150bus crop at 30,000 pop with 200 cobs/ac on the ground would be a loss of a bushel of corn.

Another aspect of cob drop is weak shanks. Due to the draught and cannibalization, the shanks were weakened and the cobs prematurely dropped down. This pinched the shank and cut off the nutrient flow to the kernels. This could result in lower test weight.

Weak stalks: Some early samples of silage are coming back low on fibre. This correlates to the weak stalks that I am seeing in the fields. Since the plant was under stress it cannibalized the fibre in the stalk to feed the cob. Some very stressed fields are starting to break down. It would be a good idea to go thru your fields and do the push test to evaluate which fields should be harvested first.

Mould: yes there is mould showing up on the cobs. Since the crop was under stress, the mould is taking advantage of it. The good news is that not all mould raises VOM levels. OMAFRA took 171 samples from across Ontario and only 6 showed VOM over 2ppm and none over 3ppm. 23 were between 1/2 and 2ppm. The full report can be found here: http://fieldcropnews.com/2012/10/2012-grain-corn-ear-mould-and-vomitoxin-survey/corndonlevels_20121001_2/

If you are concerned about VOM please let me know and I can arrange to have your corn tested.

If you have any concerns about your corn fields, please let me know.

And finally - It's early into the area corn harvest but so far we are seeing respectable corn yields!!!!
There are area fields of P0216 that were lucky to get a good rain in early July running over 220bus/ac.  Even fields that may have not received as much moisture are looking ok with yields over  180bus/ac.