On the contrary, if the cob is used for human food consumption, the harvest can start earlier.
These numbers are reached quite later from the natural ripening of maize grains. Many farmers choose to harvest even later when the moisture content has dropped to 25%, aiming at reducing machine losses and succeeding in a natural drying of the cobs in the field ( 3 ). At that moment, corn reaches the maximum dry matter accumulation. This way, the drying costs will be smaller. Grains that will be dried after harvest are generally preferred to be harvested when the moisture content has dropped below 35% or even 30%. The moisture content level in the grains is the main indicator for defining the harvesting moment. However, the exact time of harvest is greatly affected by environmental and other factors, like the product end-use. Generally, most maize varieties have a life cycle of 100-120 days from planting to harvest.
This, of course is a very rough estimation, and there can be great deviations based on maize variety and environmental factors. For every ton of grain per hectare that you could have, you can calculate roughly 7-8 tons of silage per hectare with dry matter 30%. Corn Silage Yield per HectareĪccording to the University of Wisconsin, an easy way to calculate the yield silage is by calculating first the grain yield that you could have from this field. An accurate way to pre-estimate the crop yield is to use a simple test weight technique ( 2 ). Usually, farmers make some yield estimation for the current year based on the previous harvest or the number of bags filled with kernels (number of bags * bag volume). In general, the weight of 1000 kernels ranged from 237 to 268 g (Sampathkumar, 2013). Based on FAOs data, a good commercial grain yield in an irrigated field is between 6-9 tons per hectare. The yields in African countries vary between 1 to 10 tons per hectare, with most producing on average 2-4 tons per hectare ( 1 ). For example, in the US, the average grain yield in the last decade was around 10-11 tons per hectare, in China was 6 tons per hectare, and in Brazil was 5 tons per hectare. The yield differs dramatically between countries, even in the top producing countries.
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