Research Coordinator: Dr. Akim Omokanye
Collaborating Producer: Koos & Barbara Bos, MD of Peace
From: Peace Country Beef & Forage Association 2014 Annual Report
Corn is not a traditional grazing crop in the Peace region, but results from several on-farm trials suggest that grazing corn could be part of an extended grazing program. Grazing your herd on corn can lower your winter feed costs, reduce your operating expenses and save you time. Corn also has the potential to produce more dry matter than tame hay or forage cereals. By replacing other forms of feed with standing corn, labour time, machinery use and associated costs are reduced as no summer feed harvesting is required and winter supplemental feeding is limited. Our collaborating producer, Koos Bos, has been grazing corn for some years now and every year he continues to test different corn hybrids with the aim of selecting a few corn hybrids that work well for his area.
Methods
The trial site was at Koos & Barbara Bos, Peace River. The site has had corn for 5 years and has not received any fertility in the last 3 years, so no fertilizer was applied to this year’s corn as well. We seeded 7 Roundup® corn hybrids: P7632HR (Pioneer)- 2200 corn heat units (CHUs), P7213R (Pioneer) - 2050 CHUs, 39F44 (Pioneer)- 2000 CHUs, 39D97 (Pioneer)- 2250 CHUs, EA7417R (BrettYoung) - 2200 CHUs, Fusion (BrettYoung)- 2200 CHUs, and DKC27-55RIB (Dekalb)- 2200 CHUs.
Seeding was done on May 27 with a 12-row corn planter. Spraying to control weeds was done with Round-up®. The calculated CHUs from seeding date to harvest for forage yield determination was 1775.05 for the Peace River area.