No Storage, How can I market Ear Corn ?

Title says it all.

No Storage,
How can I market Ear Corn ?

Hope to increase production 10 fold next year.
How do I market my ear corn product ?

You might ask why would I increase production if I don't have a market.

Well, cause I can. and I am looking for productive revenue for the farm.

Yes. I bought a picker.

it's gonna be fun.

  Depends on how many acres you're talking about. 

We have a guy just down the street who sold it as squirrel feed, dollar an ear, or twice the market price for a bushel!  As for storage, take a 16' cow panel, bend into a circle, add some roofing tin, for best results, place on a concrete slab, to keep the bottom rot away.  Rats will be attracted to it, however you store it!

Plain people buy all my extra. You are western Pennsylvania but i would still try an add in the Lancaster farming paper

That’s a job and a material handling job I don’t miss AT ALL.

What kind of pickers are you all running? We are going to use a Woods Bros this year

I really like the colored Heirloom corn.
I think it would sell better than streight yellow corn for....
Just about any corn need.

JMHO



Edited by Macon Rounds - 08 Sep 2023 at 9:14am

Raise that wire crib enough to get a drag elevator under the "door" area, gravity does the rest just a little shoveling at the back. Did that for years till the farm owner decided to get rid of that ugly wire crib. guessing you know to put a wire vent up the middle to aid drying. Dana that would be a 325 New Idea, that's what I have but I can't say it's my favorite...Harvey

yea
I do understand raising the crib.
I will think on that when we find a permanent location for it.

We have a crib very similar to that one sitting on a round concrete slab. Stackable round heavy wire vent goes up the middle. Squirrels could only get to the outside but really didn’t have that much of an issue. Loaded corn in by hand for the first few loads through the lower access and then with a elevator through the top. Removed corn by removing the boards in the lower load slots. We sold mainly to pig farmers and then to make feed feed for our own cattle. It was hard work but I miss it. Sold all of our corn harvesting equipment a few years ago. Switched over to a total hay operation when corn prices plummeted locally.

I always wondered why not have the cement slab under the wire corn crib with a ‘trough’ or some sort of ‘channel’ in the floor wide enough for an auger or conveyor. Have a steel slide out on the floor, that you pull(or crank) to open the floor for the ear corn to drop into.
If you constructed it correctly, you could have a series of corn cribs all lined up, set neatly in rows, with a continuous conveyor on top for filling the cribs one right after another. Just have an opening in the conveyor or auger right above each crib roof opening.
The advantage of ‘ear corn’ is the ability to harvest the crop without the massive horsepower of combine’s, and the associated infrastructure of dryers, bins, and of course the ungodly fuel costs. Ground ear corn is excellent feed.

Although we had shelled corn. We had a Gehl portable mill. Ground corn, oats, alfalfa for calf and piglet feed. Auger or conveyor into the the grinder mill, and unloading auger into bins. Usually had an IH 826, or 856. Depending on the screen, grinding baled alfalfa could bring the 826 to its knees if you weren’t careful.

Grow open pollinated multiple color kernel or Indian corn and sell it during the Fall stalk and all sells and with no spays you can grow pumpkins in the corn,feed what is leftover to the hogs and chickens

gits a corn burner heater for the shop or house, shell off the kernals and burn for heat. when ever us kids went out at night drinking or uh....other stuff, and came home late, we always had to grind ear corn the next morning with an old hammermill....PfffffT! that was about....horrible. I remember having wagon loads of that one week...it never dawned on us until later in life that it was punishment for the night before...us boys just sat at the table looking at each other after figgering that out!. LOL i've sold ear corn for squirrel food for years. a bag full of ears for $5. usually take 100 normal sized ears to make a bushel of shelld corn, bag would hold 6-7 ears. give an ear to your dog, it'll lay in the yard and eat every kernal...they love it! other wise find some cattle feeders and sell it to go along with their silage feed. zoo might buy some for feed. same with animal shelters and horse people.