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winter grazing corn

This is one of the reasons that the practice of baling of stalks and feeding them and distillers seems to be on the rise around here. People worry a lot about grazing the stubble and compacting the soil or rain/snow coming in and "ruinnin" the stalks so they decided that baling was a good option. Sell the corn at 100-120 a ton+ the Gov payments and the such and than buy the wet at 85-90 bucks a ton on a DM basis and it seams like you are good to go... I would prefer strip grazing the stalks personally but I need to put some mjor work into fencing our crop fields as most border a faily major road iwht lots of semi traffic.
 
One farmer around here always jokes (some truth to it).

He says all you cattlemen want to rent my wheat pasture or stalks and never graze yours. Then I am out chiseling my ground and yours is always ready to go.
 
LOL... We rent out most of corn ground but even our renter likes to say that to us in a "joking" manner everytime we talk about hitting the stalks.. Didn't want us messing with his tillage scheduale.. That is reason #3673 that we just take a 1/4-1/2 section a year and bale it.. Can't say they don't pick through the bales but not much I can do about taht unless I grind it.
 
Don't you know if you want to stop a horse from kicking you run him in a pen of hogs-it might not be Ray Hunt but it works. After a month or so he'll be so sick of striking out he won't do it again.
 
I have heard that for some reason they should be moved off corn for the last trimester of pregnancey. When do you calve Sandy? What variety of corn do you use?
 
I checked with a friend about his corn grazing. Last winter he used 6 acres divdied in three for 10 days for 250 cows. 416 gazing days /acres. He thought it would have run close to 15 tons for silage and no idea how many bushels.
 
Our cows start calving the middle of February. After they clean up the corn they get straw and about 10 or 12 pounds of screening pellets per cow until they move into the yard for calving. Haven't heard of any problems with corn grazing in the last trimester. We've been planting Dekalb 2712, had good luck with it . Done really well this year and it's been VERY dry.
 
last question. Do you solid seed with an air drill or use the traditional corn planter with 18" spacing. What is the difference for production?
 
We get a neighbour to seed ours with a corn planter. I think the rows are about 20 or 24 inches apart, but I'd have to check with Hubby to be sure.

Another thing to calculate in the cost of grazing corn is how many times the tractor does NOT get started. :D We figure we save a lot of fuel by letting the cows go and get their own corn. I know it sure hurts when we have to go back to bales and chores. :? You can get spoiled pretty quick.

We graze corn up to New Year, and start calving in January. We haven't seen any last trimester type problems. The exercise is good for the cows, and it seems to us that it cuts problems rather than makes them.
 
Saves alot of hay and alot of chores.
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That is a fact! I think that this would be a fine way of harvesting the reduced yield of corn this year in the drought areas because it would economize on the harvesting costs. It would pay to keep an eye on the cattle pretty closely, though. But research the links that TTB came up with! That is really a yeoman's (or - yeowoman's!?!) service she performed!

DOC HARRIS
 

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