East of Broken Bow | kb ag - 8/16/2021 01:29
How can your yield not be down much then? If you are just chopping corn that is 20 to 40bu per acre, there has to be thousands of acres that are in that 70 to 100bu that will be picked that usually make 145 or more? Is your irrigated a record crop to make up the yield loss? You made it sound like because the hay tonnage would be down, guys were going to chop corn they normally wouldn't chop in order to have more forage for the ration. That implies that the corn they normally wouldn't chop would have a fair amount of grain in it since it's corn they normally wouldn't chop. That better corn silage coupled with the fact that it becomes 85% of the ration instead of 60% of the ration would probably not need as much energy added to it.
I can understand what you meant. I still think unless your irrigated is well above average, that the dryland that is picked will pull your yield down.
Keep in mind, I'm only talking about 'here', it will be different in different places.
Here, I would say well over 80% of the corn is irrigated, probably about 85%. For the most part, the dryland is pivot corners, and smaller fields where you couldn't justify sinking a well. Family owned feedlots are pretty common around here, I can think of 3 within 5-6 miles of me, and they will likely be needing more feed, and will be bidding on the drought damaged corn for silage, less a yield check strip. The farmer will collect insurance on most of the yield loss, and sell the dried out corn for silage to the feedlots. No one wants light test weight drought damaged corn in their bin with their irrigated grain, they don't play well together.
So 90% of the dryland 'here' will be chopped, not harvested for grain. The 10% not, is less than 2% of total acres, which will not drag down the irrigated much, especially when you consider the pivot irrigated stuff will be trend or better, bringing the average up.
Hope this explains how acres for grain will be down, but yield will be trend or better, and less total production.
Edit to add: The corn the feedlots normally wouldn't chop, will most likely be dryland fields they bid on from the neighbors. If history is any guide (2012) they will chop neighboring dryland fields, and give them a bit of manure in addition to a few $$$ for the corn. The feedlots will have their own irrigated corn in another pile, and will just blend in a bit of the dryland to stretch their feed. It will need to be in separate piles, because the dryland corn is going to be chopped anytime now, and the irrigated won't be for almost another month.
Edited by HuskerJ 8/16/2021 06:31
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