BEDFORD — A few drops of solution turned up midnight blue on a corn stalk Wednesday. That meant life got a lot more complicated for area farmer Ritch Musselman.
And for Dave Redman, Lawrence County extension educator, it was one more complication thrown at farmers by the Drought of 2012. And consumers could see the results of those complications at stores in the months ahead.
Many farmers, like Musselman, have already given up on much of the corn crop, which is simply burning up in the heat and dry weather. They’re also running short on pasture land for their cattle. And they’re trying not to feed hay, which is in short supply from the drought and which they will need this winter.
“I’m trying not to feed any hay,” Musselman said.
One option is to “green chop” the corn stalks. That means hacking them down and feeding them to the cattle.
But it’s complicated.
‘Can be deadly’
Because of the drought, the corn stalks are stunted. And because they’re stunted, they’re not processing nitrates out of the plants like they would in normal years. And too much nitrate — levels over 5,000 parts per million — “can be deadly to cattle,” Redman said.
“We got Purdue to put together, very quickly, some test kits for us,” Redman said. “Purdue put them together almost overnight for us.”
Word of those kits has been spreading. So Musselman brought some corn stalks from his Greene County farm to the extension office in Bedford, where Redman tested it for nitrates.
To do the test, the corn stalks are split in two vertically, like a shoot of bamboo. Redman puts drops of the test solution on the stalk. A deep blue is bad news, showing high levels of nitrates. A brownish color identifies lower levels.
Some of Musselman’s corn stalks showed high levels nearly all the way up the stalk. But others, from moister areas of the fields, did not test as high.
Still, farmers shouldn’t shove green chop directly into feed troughs, Redman said.
“We don’t want to feed them just green chop right away,” he said. He advises mixing it in gradually with hay — say, 90 percent hay to 10 percent green chop, then slowly increasing the percentage of the corn stalks. (The mix might depend on the nitrate test results.)
“Cattle can adjust slowly,” he said, “so you can increase that little by little.”
Musselman already has been feeding a mix to his cattle. He’s been mixing straw with what farmers call “wet gluten,” a byproduct of corn processing, as a supplement. Last week, a ton of wet gluten cost him $60. Early week, the price was $105 a ton.
“It’s just not feasible” to keep going at that price, he said.
At the grocery
Redman said this complicated season affects more than farmers.
“It’s a total disaster (for the corn crop) in Indiana,” he said. “We’re going to be lucky to get any corn at all.”
As prices of feed, based on corn, rises, livestock producers are likely to cull their herds. (Musselman said he’s trying to hang onto his cattle.)
Fewer animals means “a shortage of pork and a shortage of beef somewhere down the road,” Redman said.
It’s not just meat that will be affected. Redman noted that feed corn is used in many others foods – look for ingredients like corn starch or even high fructose corn syrup.
“All of that comes from grain corn,” he said.