Marc Hutlet Seeds held a last minute crop tour and meeting with Grunthal area farmers Wednesday morning to discuss silage corn and the drought issues they have been experiencing this year.

Marcus Dueck is the Livestock Specialist at Marc Hutlet Seeds. He notes many areas in southeastern Manitoba are dealing with drought conditions, but Grunthal has been hit the hardest. He adds with the lack of rain, farmers are expected to begin chopping corn silage in about a week.

Marcus Dueck presents at the crop tour"We are going to be two to three weeks ahead of normal in some of these areas, the big problem that we are seeing is that we have had no rain in the last significant amount of time and the cob is one of the things that develops last on the plant and because the plant is out of moisture it is having a really tough time developing the cob and that is where losses are going to occur in our starch content."

Dueck says the low moisture has led to shorter stalks and smaller cobs which result in low overall volume, however, drought stressed corn has weaker cell walls which actually make it easier for the cows to digest making it higher quality silage. He notes their crop tour was quite impromptu.

"This meeting was decided only two days ago. With how fast our fields were drying down we felt it was extremely important to let the producers in this are know how quickly they need to be ready for getting out into the field and deal with the certain problems that we are seeing. This would be an emergency type of a meeting."

Dueck says the early chopping may be catching some farmers off guard.

"I think there is a little bit of shock, we are not really prepared for harvest this early and I am sure a lot of the equipment in the area isn’t ready for corn silage yet. I imagine there is going to be quite a bit of work being put in by these farmers getting this equipment ready very quickly."

Dueck says the area is very inconsistent with some fields being far ahead of others so this year silage corn will be coming off the fields more sporadically.