Many producers in central and east-central Iowa are facing severely damaged corn fields from the recent August 10th derecho. With poor quality grain not suitable for the general grain market or storage, and fields that are not mechanically harvestable, a producer might consider salvaging some value through livestock feed and forage options.
Field Ag Engineers Kristina TeBockhorst and Brian Dougherty recorded two video podcasts to get some of this information out to producers, which have been posted on the Iowa Grain Quality Initiative Website. The first podcast with Russ Euken, Iowa State University Extension and Outreach Beef Specialist, discusses the options of grazing and baling damaged corn fields, including insurance questions, infrastructure needs, sizing grazing strips, and good practices for baling dry forage. The second podcast discusses feeding damaged grain and is available at this link.
Before making any grain or forage harvest decisions, producers should discuss their options with their crop insurance provider. An additional resource for this podcast is the Grazing Down Corn Factsheet: http://www.iowabeefcenter.org/information/GrazingDownCorn.pdf.
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