Mold showing up in the corn

By DAVE DUGAN

dugan.46@osu.edu

Recently I have been told by local farm­ers that some of the early har­vest of this year’s corn crop has more issues.

Some mold is show­ing up in the har­vested corn and has been rejected when it is taken to be sold. When this hap­pens the next ques­tion is what to do next with the corn, or what can be done with it.

Recently there was an arti­cle that addresses options for feed­ing this corn to live­stock. It will need to be tested and then blended in most cases.

The arti­cle was one of many that have appeared in the daily Beef Blog that I for­ward onto beef pro­duc­ers that want to read up to date information.

If you would like to receive the Beef Blog send me an e-mail request­ing to be added. There are sev­eral other mail­ing lists that deal with agri­cul­tural news and events.

The arti­cle that I referred to addresses the lim­i­ta­tions for feed­ing. This is a por­tion of that arti­cle includ­ing the lev­els for spe­cific live­stock. Live­stock are usu­ally the mar­ket for mycotoxin-infected com­modi­ties, he added.

“Live­stock can tol­er­ate some level of myco­toxin, but lev­els above legal lim­its can cause prob­lems in live­stock. Reduced per­for­mance, immuno­sup­pres­sion, liver dam­age, and in extreme cases even death can be the result of feed­ing high lev­els of afla­toxin,” Meteer said.

Mak­ing good use of old tires

Use old trac­tor tires to save the headache of look­ing for feed­ers pushed around by live­stock while sav­ing space in the landfills.

Farm­ers are always look­ing for ways to make things work with what they have. Farm­ers are also look­ing for ways to cut costs in their oper­a­tion. With that said, many things have been devel­oped for on farm use. If you have not seen this before, you sure could have seen some great ideas that have been devel­oped this way over the years at the Farm Sci­ence Review.

So, as we are always look­ing for the next good idea, we may have an oppor­tu­nity to dou­ble dip. We can kill two birds with one stone with this one. The solid waste land­fill is some­thing that we all need to be aware of, too. Ways to reduce the amount of waste is a good thing, so if we can save money, make some­thing work bet­ter and reduce the amount of waste are all worth look­ing at.

From time to time we need to replace tires on trac­tors and other farm equip­ment. Those used tires have to go some­where. For years I have seen the rear trac­tor tires used in land­scap­ing for flower beds. Here is an idea for another use of those used tires that may help solve another problem.

How many of you have the min­eral feed­ers that have a plas­tic bot­tom with three sec­tions and a rub­ber cover to pro­tect the min­eral from the weather? If you have one or more of these you may have the prob­lem of find­ing it from time to time. The feed­ers that I have seen come with three holes near the base, but keep­ing it secure can be an issue. You may need to mea­sure the base of your feeder to find the cor­rect size tire. Most are in the 28 to 30 inch range that I have seen used. I can’t take credit, but I have sure used tires to mount these min­eral feed­ers. Some­one shared the idea with me and I only have one of these that is not mounted to a trac­tor tire. I had to go find it recently when the cat­tle pushed it down into the creek. The feed­ers mounted to tires stay put even in a bull lot.

So, save a headache of look­ing for the feeder while sav­ing space in our land­fills. It even makes it a lit­tle eas­ier to put the min­eral into the feeder as it sets about a foot or more off the ground.

(David Dugan is Exten­sion Edu­ca­tor, Agri­cul­ture and Nat­ural Resources Ohio Val­ley Exten­sion Edu­ca­tion Research Area Adams/Brown/Highland Counties.)

Posted by Tina Murdock on Oct 3 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.