Corn Silage

Believe it or not corn silage harvest is upon us and it is only September 3rd!!  As you can see in the picture below guys in Lansing Michigan where at corn silage in August all ready!

The Picture below is of 34A89, which is one of Pioneers best yielding corn silages in this area!! it is a long season variety and as you can see in the picture it is very close to 1/2 milk line all ready!!!

As you can see in the picture below the bottom 3-4 leaves in the later day corn silages varieties are starting to fire up due to drought stress.  I might add that this is one of the better looking fields I have been in this year.  There are a lot of the earlier corn silage varieties that are turning due to maturity and or because they are suffering from the August drought.

In short if you have corn silage out there I would walk into you fields to check it out, or call on your Pioneer Sales Rep to come walk the field with you.   

Have a good harvest!!!!

Western Bean Cutworm Eggs Have Hatched

As you can see in the video below the egg masses we planted in my corn field have hatched.

Timeline was quite fast on Friday night the egg masses where purple in colour, which means the eggs are close to hatching.

By Friday night the eggs hat hatched

As you saw in the movie taken on Saturday they are currently hiding beneath the leaf and I am not sure what they will do from hear. Say tuned for more updates.

Western Bean Cutworm Experiment

On Monday our Pioneer PAT intern Emily brought me 2 egg masses to plant in my corn field.   No I am not a suck for punishment, but I am always interested in learning which is our objective in this experiment.  

We Planted 1 egg mass in a refuge variety (38N85) and the other egg mass in our Herculex I Bt variety (P8906HR) or objective is to check out the control of Western Bean Cutworm (WBC) with the Herculex I Bt.  I have been monitoring the egg masses daily so I can try to keep track of the worms, it will also be interesting to see how the worms will interact in the corn field as they mature.  Stay tuned for more updates on the WBC site if you want to see it in person mark September 9th 2010 on your calendar because it will be a stop on our customer appreciation plot day.