LEADER, Sask. – It’s an unseasonably cool fall day at Jerry Watts’ farm, but it matters little to the crows swooping down on vulnerable corn cobs at the edge of the field.
The fields are also abuzz with harvesters mulching corn plants into silage and trucks with heaping loads lumbering down the dusty road to storage pits in the farmyard.
The cool weather is in sharp contrast to the exceptionally hot growing season that produced this abundant corn crop.
Jerry and his wife Joan, with sons Kim and Brent, grow corn under irrigation to feed a 420-head cow-calf operation on the banks of the South Saskatchewan River north of Leader. They also grow dryland barley and run a feedlot, buying calves in the fall.
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Jerry said crows are a minor irritation for corn producers compared to the more serious risks of cool years and spring and fall frosts.
The Watts say their hot, dry region is usually an excellent spot to grow corn. This year, the heat helped their corn rank among the best in tests conducted by Les Bohrson of Saskatchewan Agriculture.
“There’s lot of heat units, not lots for corn, but too much for people,” Brent said.
Effective early weed control is essential, added Brent, who sprayed herbicide at the four- to six-leaf stage.
The Watts grow corn in 75 centimetre rows, which leaves room for weeds to thrive and compete with the crop.
“Weeds will turn 10-foot corn into three-feet corn,” Brent said.
At planting time, the family starts with a seed bed rich with manure from their cattle.
They also apply about 90 pounds of actual nitrogen per acre in the form of 180 lb. per acre of urea, plus 120 lb. per acre of 0-28-26.
The corn is seeded around May 10-15 and harvested with a corn header for silage about the second week of September. The Watts prefer that to swathing first, which knocks off too many cobs.
Seed choice is also critical, with the family planting a mix of low to high heat unit corn varieties.
Ideally, each plant should have one cob per plant, they say, noting 45 percent of the harvested tonnage is in the cobs.
“There’s nothing else you can grow that gives you that much feed,” Jerry said.
Added Kim: “It has no protein; we shoot for energy.”
The silage is snugly packed into earthen pits adjacent to the feedlot, allowed to ferment under a plastic cover and then fed to cattle.
There is little corn grown in these parts, so their crops turn the heads of passersby.
They grew corn on dryland acres until the droughts of the 1980s. Even now, with the irrigation, Kim said the crop is risky and expensive.
Added Jerry: “All it is is an expense if you don’t do it right.”
Corn needs specialized equipment and requires at least 25 millimetres of water every three days to fill the heads.
Roundup Ready corn seed has made weed control easier, but is more expensive.
Corn also requires much labour to gather and pack in the fall, with the Watts getting help this day from two local men.
The other drawback has been the lack of crop insurance available to corn producers, even irrigated ones, something the Watts hope will change.
Corn is a good fit with their cattle operation, said the Watts, who can use what they grow and never have to haul crops to an elevator.
In recent years, they have hosted numerous field days and participated in corn seminars, particularly in the corn-growing region of Taber, Alta.
“You’ve got to travel around a bit and see what other guys are doing,” said Kim.
Jerry agreed: “You never get done learning.”
