Corn Silage Interest Grows

There’s still a lot of crop waiting to be harvested around the province.

Rick Toney is a cattle producer in the Gull Lake area and is waiting for a change in the weather to harvest his first Corn crop.

Toney seeded 240 acres of corn around the end of May, which was a little later than he would have liked, but they were waiting on a corn seeder.

“In the lower spots it’s over 8 feet high, but there are other spots where its 4 feet high, the crop’s really wavy. I haven’t really been using corn for a long period of time so I can’t really tell you what’s going to happen. We’ll know when we get it off.”

It’s a crop that you don’t often see grown in Southwest Saskatchewan but with the technology and new breeding lines, he thought he’d try it for silage.

“They have made tremendous genetic improvements in corn varieties, shortened up the days and heat units. I’ve been watching a couple of people in our area that have been growing it for a few years and they’ve been doing very well with it. From the outside (of his crop) looking in, inputs are double what we’d have with barley silage but we’re going to get double the tonnage.”

Toney says he hasn’t harvested the corn crop yet, but so far he’s pleased with what he sees.