Right now the cows and bull are grazing the standing corn, the calves are in an adjacent pasture on hay and mineral until weaned. Towards the end of January I do a flip flop and sort the cows off of the corn (so they don't get too fat by calving time) into the weaning pasture on hay only with the heifer calves and at the same time sort the steer calves onto the corn with the bull. This leaves all the females on hay and the males on corn.

My goal is to have at least a couple steers "finished" on grazed standing corn and processed in early March. They will have about 6-8 weeks on corn before processing. The steers will be a bit young (12 months) to process but I think the quality gain will offset the lost weight due to being young. I'm not sure what the daily gain is when grazing corn like this. I suspect it can be very good or bad depending on how long you make them eat stalk. The steers I'll try to keep on fresher stalks with as many ears as possible. Sort of like feeding whole eared corn out of a crib.

A few of my steers weaned last weekend over 700 lb actual (about 205 day but before adj) so with good hay until January and on good standing corn (I'm saving a north slope area for them to finish on) for about 2 months they should be good for processing as quality beef in March at about 12 months old. I moved calving up a week or two this spring to see if I can get them a bit older before the ground thaws in the spring and they need to be off of the corn.

I found last year that it seems to be a good idea to have some hay available to the group on the unharvested corn. They seem to know when they've had too much corn and need some hay, especially when I open a new area. They can come and go in and out of the cornstalks as they wish into an adjacent pasture (where the hay feeders are) or imto the woods for winter protection. They eat ears first, then the husks, then the upper stalks and finally, if forced, the lower stalks. But I don't want to force the lower stalks.

The hay is to offset the ear corn early and provide protein later. The hay I bought tested at about 16%. The only "supplement" both groups get is a Mineralyx barrel available at all times. That is not intended as a significant protein source. I use a sweet feed as a training aid but not a significant amount for nutrition.

The younger steers will stay with the bull until they are ready to process. The last of the steers will go to the processor at bull turn-in in June.

This is also an ongoing continuous corn/grazing/strip till experiment. Stripping into the grazed stalks in the spring was really not bad. But there is too much residue between the rows in continuous corn to plant anything else as you mention.

Seems to me like alternating individual rows of corn and soybeans the corn would just shade out the beans. I don't think I want to get into hand planting a climbing bean in corn. I also lose enough to the wildlife as it is. The "oldtimers " probably worked the ground pretty thoroughly in their system. Beans also just don't produce the biomass tonnage that corn does. his corn gives me a lot cow days of grazing which is what I am mostly after.

I think the thing that makes this work economically is getting the corn in and up and weed controlled as inexpensively as possible. Spring strip tilling with 28% between last years rows and a reasonably paleteable (sp?) RU stack variety is about as economical as you can get except for the seed cost.  Soil tests seem to indicate my P & K are holding at the adequeate level - must be the manure and/or residue. Here's an evening picture of what the spring strips looked like near the spot grazed in the photo above.

Jim at Dawn 

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