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My wife’s fluffy white dog I drive around with for work. He likes to eat higher moisture corn and cow shit.

For silage corn the entire plant is harvested, chopped up, and packed tightly in a pile and covered with plastic or very large plastic bag. This creates an anaerobic conditions and yeasts/bacteria convert the sugars alcohol, then acids. This acid preserves the feed for cattle for up to 2 years. Silage corn is the most common base feed for all dairies and feedlots. This isn’t even the tallest variety out there. There are others that are 3’ (1m) taller. The machine with the spout is a chopper. They are a million dollar gigantic woodchipper. These things are fucking terrifying and you should absolutely stay out the field when they are running. Every so often a deer jumps into them…shudder… nightmare fuel.

Early in the season before a corn plant is waist high it takes a guess on how many kernals it can fill. Sometimes it guesses wrong and so it aborts the top kernals to fill the rest.

The entire top of the damn plant turns bright red. As sugars build up in the top of the plant with no place to be transported to, the upper leaves start to turn bright red and die back. You may get a bar bell ear or there may be no ear on the plant. In of field of millions of plants a bright red top narrows the search down.

Start getting your pinky in shape with this weird environmental triggered trait. It’s easy to find in any corn field (to be continued…).

This right is 350bu/acre of corn. 113 day variety on an almost pure sand field. Every damn ear looked the same. Look at that beauty, every kernal is huge and dense.

This here is trichoderma ear rot in an organic field. This 100 day variety was chewed on by an earworm. The damaged kernals allowed trichderma to enter and infect the ear. This ear rot produces many toxins and is a big no for consumption. The twist - Trichoderma is usually a beneficial organism in the soil. It feeds on other pathogenic fungus/bacteria and is applied extensively for biological control. Although normally a secondary pathogen, it has mutated to become a primary pathogen in both Italy and Germany in recent years.

This here is a genetically susceptible 113 day variety to fusarium kernal rot. This is a nasty little fungus that produces all sorts of mycotoxins that can give any mammal that consumes it a belly ache or even death. It’s easily identifiable by the white streaks in causes in the kernals.

This 98 day little minx has a flirty pink cob. It doesn’t look like much but it packs quite the wallop. The ears posted yielded 302bu. Medium high ear placement and a fast drydown makes this an excellent choice for grain.

This is pretty little 102 day number with a bright white cob that threshes very easily. It does extremely well for dry grain, high moisture grain or earlage. The field in this picture averaged 305bu.