Harvest looks good

As hundreds of bushels of dried, golden kernels of corn rained down into the auger at Jackson-Jennings Co-op on Monday, you’d be hard-pressed to think farmers have faced a cool, wet fall on top of a cool, wet spring and early summer.

“It’s doing real good,” Mark Hehman of Hamilton Township said as he watched his trailer of grain spill from its hoppers Monday afternoon in Cortland. “It’s good quality.”

Hehman, who farms in the Cortland area, is about 10 days from wrapping up his harvest.

Richard Beckort of Purdue Extension Jackson County said much of the area’s corn crop is already harvested.

“It’s getting real close,” he said. “There’s always some still out there, but in the last week farmers made a big advance on it. We’ve had a week without rain and they’ve made a big advance on corn and soybeans.”

Hehman agreed.

“Things really dried up last week,” he said. “That made the harvest go faster and the corn has dried.”
That means less cost to dry the grain.

Beckort said he’s been impressed with the harvest.

“For what all it’s had thrown at it this year, a wet, cool spring, flooding and a wet, cool fall, it’s been a fairly good year,” he said.

But Hoosier farmers did have wet, cool conditions earlier this fall, and that’s starting to pose some problems, especially in northern counties as well as in southwestern Indiana.

Those conditions have caused mold to appear in some of Indiana’s corn crop, and it’s now creating problems for livestock and ethanol producers.

Mold, which is present in much of the Midwest this year, can produce toxins that can reduce livestock weight and value because some animals won’t eat poor-quality grains.
It can also create birthing problems and lead to low birth weight a

nd suppress the immune systems in poultry, Ken Eck, Purdue University’s Extension educator for Dubois County in southwest Indiana, told The Herald of Jasper.

As much as 40 percent of the corn in fields Eck has looked at in southwestern Indiana has been affected by mold.
Beckort said he doesn’t think the problem is as prevalent in Jackson County.

“I’ve heard a few reports, but not a lot,” he said. “It’s something they should all be aware of, that that problem is out there and they should be watching their crop.”

Eck said hogs are the livestock most affected by grain tainted with mold or toxins, followed by poultry, because those animals have only one stomach to digest mycotoxins.

Mold and toxins won’t harm humans because of the high quality demanded for produce sold for human consumption, he said.

“And if it’s found, you’re pretty well stuck with it,” Beckort added of moldy corn. “Elevators don’t want it, especially if they’re producing feed out of it.”

Beckort said he’s not heard of any Jackson County farmers reporting problems with their livestock as a result of moldy corn.

He said the mold can be mitigated to a degree.

“It can be mixed with clean corn, so that the fungus level is lower and you can still feed it,” Beckort said.

Jasper farmer Brian Weisheit told The Herald that he and others who work on Weisheit Brothers Farms near the town of Ireland have put an additive in the corn they grew to feed their hogs so the animals will eat it and not be harmed.

The added expense can cost as much as $400 to $500 each month, he said.

Why do the animals stop feeding?

“I don’t know if it’s a taste thing or what, but they’ll go off feed and stop gaining weight because they’re not eating enough to maintain their weight and stop gaining,” Beckort said.

Weisheit said he’s mostly concerned about pregnant sows because they can abort their litters if they ingest too much of the toxins in the corn.

Gary Callaway, feed division manager for Jackson-Jennings Co-Op, said Monday only one corn sample has come back positive for mycotoxins in the corn he’s seen this fall.

“So far we’ve ran into minimal problems,” Callaway said.

The co-op feeds its product to its own hogs and sells feed to other livestock producers.

“We’ll go through approximately 700,000 bushel of corn just for our hogs alone,” he said. “We also produce feed for others, perhaps another 50,000 bushel.”

When you’re dealing with that kind of volume, testing and taking steps to combat the mold, perhaps by adding a binder to the feed that helps gather and push the mycotoxins through an animal’s digestive system or mixing moldy and clean corn, all add to the cost, which cuts into the profits of the co-op and livestock producers, Callaway said.

The co-op’s contracted operators produce about 100,000 head of hogs annually in 11 barns. Seven are in Jackson County, two are in Jennings County and Harrison and Washington counties are home to one each.

Eck said farmers can test corn to decide if they have to add higher-quality corn, enzyme and binders to the mixture to make it palatable for animals.

He said some farmers sell low-quality grain to ethanol plants. They get less money that way but can recoup some of their investment rather than dumping the crop with no profit.

Richard Stroshine, a professor with Purdue’s department of agriculture and biological engineering, said ethanol plants are aware of the problem, and some are separating low-quality grain in the distilling process or rejecting it altogether.