While the corn stayed green for silage season in parts of the state, drought conditions resulted in lower moisture levels and poor ear development in many regions. 

While the corn stayed green for silage season in parts of the state, drought conditions resulted in lower moisture levels and poor ear development in many regions. 

Spotty rainfall throughout much of Pennsylvania is forcing farmers to make some difficult decisions with their silage harvest.

While some areas have had adequate precipitation, there are plenty of places that remain abnormally dry. As a result, the corn crop is drying down incredibly fast, but while the moisture level in the plants drops, the grain hasn’t caught up.

The dilemma is leaving farmers with a tough choice: start chopping silage early to salvage plant moisture while sacrificing grain development, or give the ears a little more time at the risk of plants becoming too dry.

“It certainly is a weird year,” said Rob Kauffman, field manager for Farmers’ Independent Research of Seed Technologies. “I’ve had people tell me the plant moisture is running around 60%, but the grain is barely at milk line. There will be a lot of last- minute decisions on when to start chopping.”

As of Aug. 29, Kauffman said the silage season started early in parts of the southeast.

In Lancaster County, dairy farmer G.N. Hursh started chopping some of his corn on Aug. 22, much earlier than normal. He said the ears were half-size or less, but plant moisture was dry enough to fill the silo. Conversely, Hursh said some of his other corn fields weren’t nearly dry enough to chop.

“The corn I planted end of April and beginning of May is in the low 60s for moisture, and some of that is 117-day corn,” Hursh said.

He added there were noticeable differences even within fields, as the ears on hills or knobs were much smaller as those places remained drier than the rest of the field.

On his test plots, Kauffman said corn in the Martinsburg and State College areas was getting enough rain to stay green, but with sporadic rain in most places, he expects the overall silage yield to be down due to shorter plants.

“The guys with their own choppers will be OK, but the problem this year is if you have a custom harvester come in, they might not get it all chopped in time because the fodder is drying down too fast,” Kauffman said.

According to Dwane Miller, a field and forage crop educator with Penn State Extension in Schuylkill County, an early harvest is a possibility this year based on dry down calculations conducted on two test plots. The plots had 111- and 108-day corn planted between May 10 and 15, and the moisture levels were down by 7% and 4% compared to last year. Miller anticipates the harvest will be a week to 10 days early in parts of Schuylkill and Lancaster counties.

“The 108-day test corn in Schuylkill County was at 68% (on Aug. 22), and the 111-day corn in Lancaster County was at 72%. Target moisture for an upright silo is 65%, and you assume an average of .5% dry down per day,” Miller said. “Things will fluctuate, but it’s clear that some areas were impacted harder by the drought.”

Such a scenario leads to a tricky situation for farmers, he said, as they balance trying to achieve maximum grain fill on the ears before the moisture level in the plant drops too low.

There are options that could allow more time for ears to fill out, Miller said, such as adding water as the silo is filled if the corn gets too dry.

But that option isn’t perfect.

According to Miller, it takes 7 gallons for every ton of silage to increase moisture by 1%.

“It’s a lot of time, labor and water, and it slows the unloading process down considerably,” he said.

Another alternative is to decrease the cutting length to improve packing in the silo if the silage is drier.

“There really is no good solution for harvesting silage at improper moisture levels,” Miller said.

Those who raise corn for grain have also been impacted by the dry conditions, and some are opting to chop the crop for silage in order to salvage something from the field. In such instances, a silage harvest could occur earlier than normal, and Miller said in some parts of the state corn intended for grain has been salvaged for silage.

“If it’s going downhill real fast, some people are turning to chopping it for silage,” he said. “In those pockets where things have been really dry, folks aren’t too encouraged to get into the fields.”

Another consideration to salvage a rapidly drying corn crop is to green chop the stand and feed it right away. Miller cautioned such a move can be risky, especially after a significant rain event following a prolonged dry period. In those instances, he said, nitrates can accumulate in the bottom of the stalk.

“The ensiling process normally takes out half the nitrates, but if you’re taking it off as green chop, wait at least three days after a rain to chop, or increase the cutting height to 10 or 12 inches to reduce the nitrate level,” Miller said.

“Even though it might not be a true widespread drought event this year, the rain has been extremely sporadic and that can be challenging for a silage harvest.”

The Pennsylvania Drought Task Force declared a drought watch for 36 counties during a special meeting on Aug. 31.

Corn and soy bean crops are hurting as the summer dry spell continues.

You can look at corn fields in the same township, separated by just a few miles, and see very different results due to rain — or lack thereof.

Tom Venesky is a staff reporter for Lancaster Farming. He can be reached at tvenesky@lancasterfarming.com

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