hi all, for someone who does not even own a picker, I seem to be asking a lot of questions... how do you store your cob corn? cribs? bins? what about storing shelled corn? My preference is to pick and shell in the field but can I avoid drying costs? The neighbours who combine corn have on-farm dryers or sell direct to the coop where it is dryed and stored. I'm trying to get a handle on what I need for a 'system'. thanks,
It realy dosen't matter if you store in a crib or a bin it's all acording to how much you won't to store. You can avoid drying if yopu let the corn get below 14% and don't store it to deep try to keep it spreed out. Hope this helps .
See my post on Picking Ear Corn - it shows the cribs the ears are stored in. This corn was put in at 23-24% moisture and mother nature will dry it down to 13-15% by next summer. Then we'll get out the corn sheller and shell them out, probably in August or early September. I'll post some pictures then. Shelled corn is stored in a bin but unless you have a drying floor in the bin, it has to be 15% moisture or less so that it will not spoil. If it has a drying floor, you can put it in up to 18% moisture and dry it with a dryer fan just blowing air thru it. Wetter than that and you will need to add heat to the air.
thanks, so from your other post I understand that ear corn occupies approx twice the volume of shelled corn? any problem with rats/mice in the ear corn in cribs? spoilage from snow/rain? I've sometimes seen those style cribs in western Ontario but never here in central Ontario. I'm looking at doing 15 acres per year so need to plan storage.
You could use one decent sized corn crib for what you're looking for. You may have some problems with mice, but thats about it. Spoilage is minimal, what we usually do is put a spreader at the top of the crib, just beneath the drop of the elevator that spreads the corn out before it hits the bottom of the crib. Basically, if you took an old disc blade, turned it upside down so its convexed, then welded 3 arms on it so you could hook it to the crib, you would have a spreader. They keep spoilage down to a minimum, as they spread any shelled corn that you may have in the crib. Also, if you do get a crib, save yourself the hassle and buy a drag elevator. When you pour the cement for the crib, make it so you have about a 8' trench in the center. Cover the trench with 2"x4" planks, that way you can put the drag in there and then just slowly take out the planks for your flow. Also, you can put a vent up the center of the crib easier if you have that trench, dries it out faster. Hope this helps.
