Lousy corn yields and fears of the same for soybeans are facts of life on the back side of this summer’s hot, dry weather.
Most corn ears in today’s ready-to-harvest fields are short and pithy with a handful of kernels. Yields of 30 bushels an acre, a third or less of normal, are anticipated.
Soybeans, developed over the years to withstand heat and drought, still are green and growing from recent showers, but the jury is still out on whether blooms held on long enough to produce pods that will fill with marketable beans.
The severe summer weather also has been hard on livestock.
“We’ve lost several head,” said Layne Sterling, of a herd of 80 Holstein steers he and his father, Merle, brought in late spring and have on pasture northeast of Humboldt.
The steer calves, weighing about 150 pounds at purchase, were expected to have doubled their weight or more by now. Instead, they’re at 230 to 250 pounds, and the several that have died add to the likelihood that the Sterlings will have a difficult time breaking even when the animals are ready for sale at feeder weights of 500 to 600 pounds.
The steers came from a dairy in Wisconsin — male calves are superfluous for milk producers — and Layne Sterling thinks the difference in temperature between torrid Kansas and much milder Wisconsin played a role in their demise.
One carcass was sent to Kansas State University for a thorough examination to determine cause of death.
The weather has had a significant role in the remainder of the steers not gaining weight as expected, Sterling said.
He already is feeding hay, which usually doesn’t occur until the snow flies. Pasture grass has taken a significant hit along with row crops, although the Sterlings are fortunate in that a 3-inch rain two weeks ago revived grass. Cattle are starting to nibble on fresh natural shoots.
This is the third year the Sterlings have purchased calves to raise to feeder weight.
Two years ago they bought Holsteins and made enough profit for Sterling to construct an intricate hay bonnet for confined feeding.
The lengthy V-shaped contraption is made of pipe, with a concrete trough underneath. Steers munch on the hay fed into the bonnet. Fodder that sifts through is caught in the trough to give the animals a second meal.
The feeding area also was covered with rock, rolled to a smooth surface to facilitate removing manure.
“WE SHOULD start cutting corn in about a week,” Sterling said. His expections are at a pragmatic low.
Occasional fields in river and creek bottoms might do better, said Marvin Lynch at Piqua Farmers Cooperative.
Corn also is at risk of having too-high concentrations of aflatoxin, a mold that surfaces when corn is stressed by drought and extreme heat.
Some corn carried to Piqua has tested high enough for aflatoxin that price paid has been docked, Lynch said.
Aflatoxin levels up to 20 parts per million aren’t a concern, Lynch said. Beyond that the corn has to go to a different bin and may be fed only to meat-producing animals
“It goes into milk but not meat,” he said. “Actually, it’s more of a problem having to do the testing than any levels we’ve found so far.”
A bigger problem than the mold is test weight.
“We’re averaging about 51 pounds,” he said. The standard is 56 pounds for a bushel.
Corn was $6.88 a bushel at Piqua Friday, down 12 cents in morning trading, while soybeans were at $13.21 a bushel.
Most farmers have insurance with payments based on this year’s yield, which requires an adjuster’s assessment or a harvest sample so a comparison may be to previous years’ yields for each farmer. Settlements usually do little more than meet input costs.
“You usually just break even with insurance,” Sterling said.
“Too bad,” he added. “A few weeks ago it looked like we were going to have the best corn ever.”
SOYBEANS, at least from Sterling’s perspective, is another matter.
“They might have a chance,” he said.
A storm that brought the 3 inches of rain to a swatch of south Allen County was a lifesaver.
“I’ll bet our beans grew six inches right after the rain and they’ll looking good now,” he said. “The showers lately also have helped.”
So has the recent growth that “canopied” bean fields, which means that plants have grown enough that bare ground between rows is shaded. That reduces evaporation.
“We have group 5 (later maturing) beans and they bloom a second time,” Sterling said, meaning they’ll set on pods later into the season, although second bloom beans usually don’t yield as well as those formed from first blush.
Recent rainfall has been hit and miss throughout the county. Soybeans hold promise for relatively good yields in some areas, not so much so in others. Some farmers allow that beans planted no-till in stubble after wheat was harvested may do better than full-season crops that were beset by bloom-wilting heat in late July.
No-till and minimum-till planting has become common in the area.
Sterling purchased a no-till planter a year ago and will use it to plant oats and wheat where corn soon will be harvested. The field is near where the Holstein steers are kept and the second crops will provide winter pasture.
“But, we’re still conventional farmers,” Sterling said. “We’re not going to no-till all together. We did some minimum-till this year,” which entailed working ground early and then planting in the stale seedbed several weeks later.
STERLING GREW up on the family farm and has spent about half his 38 years in farming, a few with Jim Jarred and more recently with his parents, Merle and Julie Sterling, as well as some land he rents.
“I worked about six years at Gates (Corporation) but enclosed walls weren’t my cup of tea,” he said.
He keeps busy when chores don’t call as an agent for Western Feed Mill, Cedarville, and a couple of companies that make livestock handling equipment. Layne and wife Alicia, employed by the ANW Special Education Cooperative, live on the family farm. What once was a large chicken house now holds sacks of minerals, from the Cedarville plant, and small piece of equipment. He orders in feed, sold in bulk, and equipment that isn’t practical to keep on site.
If that and farming weren’t enough, he also has a semi-transport, with which he hauls grain, hay and cattle, for the Sterling operation as well as others.
