Estimating Corn Yield

I've been feeding the pigs a little bit of ear corn. They attack it with great vigor! I thought it would be fun to estimate yield from our little plot. The national yield this year is predicted to be 155.3 bushels per acre. This, of course, is heavily managed hybrid corn. Gene Logsdon got 110 bushels per acre from the Open Pollinated variety "Reids Yellow Dent." I grew Nothstine Dent as I outlined in this blog entry. I picked and shucked corn from a 125 square foot area, it filled a five gallon bucket.

The sacrificed area

5 gallon of ear corn

The best looking ear of the group

A couple were pretty...

The worse

A couple weren't...

Dent corn

Some were drier than others...













Now for the math to figure out bushels per acre. A bushel of shelled corn, corn that is no longer on the cob, weighs about 56 pounds. To get a bushel of shell corn from ear corn, what I have, you need 70 pounds of ear corn. That five gallon bucket weighed 23 pounds.

23 pounds of ear corn equals .328 bushels of shell corn.

.328 bushels per 125 square feet. 125 square feet is .00287 acres.

.328 bushels per .00287 acres.

Time for some algebra:

.328 bushels/.00287 acres = x bushels/1 acre

114 bushels / acre

Pretty respectable for open pollinated if this method of estimating is at all reliable. I imagine I am not acounting for lots of variables. How accurately did I measure the sample area? Not very... How does the moisture content of the corn play into this? I don't know...

Regardless, The numbers suggest this was worth doing. This means I will get about 11.5 bushels of corn. The price of corn today is 4.59 a bushel. Sweet! I raised $53 dollars worth of corn. Of course I spent about twice that on fuel, manure, seed and urea...

These folks a couple hours south me got 60 bushels / acre with Nothstine.

Now this is better corn than from the feed mill. Open pollinated is supposed to be higher in protein than hybrid corn. It is definitely non-GMO. The pigs enjoy it fresh. The nutrients and organic matter from the manure will benefit the soil for many growing season beyond this one. Since it is open pollinated I can reuse seed and I only used a small amount of the urea which I can save for future years. So we will call it a wash... Just like what they found in the movie King Corn! I need to sign up for my subsidy ;)

Maybe I will try this corn yield estimate on a different part of the field on a future date this fall.

On a different note I found this pile of poop near the corn. We have had a black bear sighting near our house recently. Is that what this is?

Bear scat?