# Baling maize leftovers



## 128mpr (Oct 23, 2011)

I make small hay bales during summer while our neighbours grow maize.

Summer is well gone now and we're heading into autumn.

The maize was harvested today. Sometimes it's cut while green for silage, but by this time of the year it's harvested just for the maize kernels with the stalk and leaves thrown out the back of the combine harvester.

My question is, can I bale up the maize stalks and leaves ?

The material is well dried and if I time it right, the weather is still warmish, no rain.

I'm guessing I could just rake the material, then bale it immediately.

I have a Kuhn rotary rake, so it should rake it ok and not get caught up in the uncut stalks.

The baler pickup might not like the uncut stalks (I use a Welger AP71).

The bales would need to be picked up immediately as the ground is damp.

Has anyone tried this ?

What equipment ?

What is the baled material useful for ?

I imagine it's nutritional value is fairly low.

Great for animal bedding perhaps.

thanks, Shane


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## Tx Jim (Jun 30, 2014)

Where I live during droughts a lot of milo & corn stalks are baled for feed. I use a rotary(pasture) mower to mow the stalks left standing after combining then wait about 24 hrs then rake with a wheel rake & rd bale. It will surprise you how much of a bale the cows will eat and with a little protein supplement the cows will do fairly well.


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## swmnhay (Jun 13, 2008)

It's very common here to bale stalks.Most is used for bedding.Some is used for feed either just give them the bale let them eat what they want and lay on the rest.Some is ground up and mixed with other feed in a feeder wagon.
you need to make sure the stalks are dry when you bale them or you will get moldy bales.Most here will shred them to aid in drying them,or chopping heads on combines.
some have made baleage baleing directly behind combine when they are fairly wet and wrapping them.
There is a hundred different ways to make them.From just rake ing thre the stalks.fairly hard on rake and pickup teeth.To prepare ing them by shredding,mowing,rolling them before rakeing.


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## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

Good advice all around above. You didn't give your location, so I'm not sure whether you're talking about "milo" (grain sorghum) or "corn" (yellow dent #2) when you said "maize". In our part of the world, "maize" is synonymous with "milo" or "grain sorghum". In other areas, "maize" means "corn".

For cornstalks, basically it's best if the chopper on the combine can be rolled back and the stuff dropped in a windrow. Follow with a shredder or mower to cut the remaining stalks, rake with a wheel rake, make sure its dry enough to store, then bale. The stover is pretty low nutritional quality and usually best used as bedding, though the cows will eat some of it. Can make decent feed if supplemented with protein, and if you're trying to use it for feed, you can up-end the bales and pour a five gallon pail of molasses liquid feed into the end of the bale and give it some time to work its way down through the bale, which will increase palatability and intake.

For sorghum stalks, you'll want to mow behind the combine with a shredder or cutter and let it lay awhile... sorghum stalks are usually MUCH greener and wetter than corn stalks at harvest, and will take awhile to dry down. If you have a conditioner, that will definitely speed things up. Due to the thick, hard, pithy stalks and most of the plant's nutrients having been transferred to the grain, the feed value is again pretty low, but better than corn stalks which have pretty well dried down by grain harvest. Make sure it's dry enough to bale, as the thick, wetter stalks will take longer to dry down than corn stalks.

The neat thing about sorghum is, it will regrow when cut, unlike corn which is dead after harvest. If you really want to make top-notch sorghum hay, and you have the local climate and growing conditions (ie enough heat units and time after harvest to do it) then this is a good method that has worked for us in the past...

We're in SE TX and sorghum comes off in mid-July. Most crops are grown on beds and that's murder on rakes and balers, and you leave half the crop behind when trying to bale anyway. Some folks bale the stalks behind the combine, but for top notch hay, you're better off to shred the stalks with a bush-hog as low as you can, then disk the field to knock the beds down... don't bury the disk and rip the roots out, but knock as much of the dirt off the tops of the beds as one can. The sorghum will re-sprout and regrow from the mown-off stalk crown. This disking also incorporates any sorghum grain that was shelled out at the header, dropped heads that fell off the header, or grain that rode over the sieves/chaffer... If you REALLY want to thicken up the stand and increase the yield of the hay, hold back a few hundred pounds of grain sorghum from the last load out of the field, and run it through a cone spreader to broadcast it over the field and incorporate it lightly with a light disking. Most of this grain will sprout with the next rain and you'll get a very pretty stand of broadcast sorghum. Let it get about 2-3 feet tall, just prior to booting out, and cut it for hay, handle it like you would sorghum-sudan. Usually for us it'd be ready to bale around the end of August or early September... This will make hay that is highly palatable and nutritious, more like sorghum sudan in its prime than stalks or stover hay... it's also a LOT leafier and less stemmy, as the stalks will be much smaller and finer and less pithy and coarse than over-mature stover taken after grain harvest which has low digestibility.

Good luck and hope this helps! OL JR


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## Gearclash (Nov 25, 2010)

Since you are using a square baler to bale corn stalks I would recommend trying as much as possible to have a fine, dry and dirt free material. Square baler knotters do not work in cornstalks as well as they do in hay. You may also need to slow down from your normal bale per minute rate.


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## 128mpr (Oct 23, 2011)

Thanks for all the advice.

I'm on New Zealand where maize is basically corn. The neighbours grow maize and cut it green and use the whole plant for silage or they let it die and dry, cut it for the kernels and discard the leaves & stalks onto the ground.

It's the dried leaves and stalks that I'm thinking of baling up.

It would be to sell, not for my own use (don't have any livestock).

New maize is popping up in the field, so won't be cut for about 6 months or so.

Will try it then.


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## gradyjohn (Jul 17, 2012)

128mpr said:


> Thanks for all the advice.
> 
> I'm on New Zealand where maize is basically corn. The neighbours grow maize and cut it green and use the whole plant for silage or they let it die and dry, cut it for the kernels and discard the leaves & stalks onto the ground.
> 
> ...


Maize and Milo are basically the same here in Texas and Corn is corn. Corn stalks are basically filler and off no or very little nutritional value. Milo offers about 5% protein but is cut here in August when temps are 100+. When I round bale milo I cut the stalks and leaves with a MOCO, wait a day or so and rake and bale ... generally between 8 PM and 6 AM. Too hot in the day and leaves will shatter. Also I operate the baler about 1500 eng rpms except when wrapping. Good hay when you are in a drought.


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## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

128mpr said:


> Thanks for all the advice.
> I'm on New Zealand where maize is basically corn. The neighbours grow maize and cut it green and use the whole plant for silage or they let it die and dry, cut it for the kernels and discard the leaves & stalks onto the ground.
> 
> It's the dried leaves and stalks that I'm thinking of baling up.
> ...


Here in the US, dry leaves and stalks of combined corn harvested for grain is sometimes rolled up for bedding, but that's about it.

Once the grain crop has made the the leaves and stalks dry down, they're practically worthless nutritionally for animal feed... the stalks are virtually indigestible (unless ground up completely, the animals won't eat them unless they're starving) and the leaves have transferred all their nutritional value into the grain as it matured, which is why they die and dry up.

Silage is typically cut before the corn gets too mature, when the leaves and stalks are still green and therefore still have some nutrients left in them (and are chopped fine in the process to increase palatability for livestock), and the ensiling process of fermentation also frees nutrients that would otherwise be locked up.

SO, if you have a market for animal bedding, this might be a good thing. If not, well... probably no takers.

Some folks bale grain sorghum stalks for feed, after combining for grain, because unlike corn grain sorghum remains alive and in fact will produce a second head, called a "rattoon crop" that can be harvested later after the grain has flowered, pollinated, filled, and dried down. With farm costs for diesel and such, and with the cost of machinery and the low yields typical of a rattoon crop in sorghum, the procedure is rarely done anymore... Rice also makes a rattoon crop; used to be that the rattoon crop was where the profit was-- the main crop just paid the bills. Not as much rice being rattoon cropped as it used to be either from what I've seen, at least in our area...

Basically, even with grain sorghum stalks, by the time they've produced a grain crop, most of the nutrients have been exported into the maturing grain, and the remaining stalks and leaves have low nutritional value. The main difference is, they're alive and thus can pick up more nutrients from the soil and through photosynthesis, something dead corn stalks and leaves cannot do. Even then, baling milo (grain sorghum, "maize" as we call it in Texas) stalks and stover isn't going to produce high quality hay...

If one wants to produce GOOD hay from grain sorghum stalks, it's best to bush-hog them off (run a rotary mower over them, or a flail mower) and chop out all the old, thick, fibrous (thus highly unpalatable and largely indigestible) stalks and old leaves, and disk the field lightly... this will incorporate some of the residue and further chop it up, and incorporate grain dropped from the combine so it can sprout and make new plants. The sorghum will re-sprout from the cut-off stalk, producing new tender, lush, green leaves (so long as it's not too dry) and the dropped seed from the combine (which can be supplemented by spreading a little additional grain from the combine through a spinner spreader if desired) will grow up with new green shoots and leaves, and then cut THAT for hay when it's a couple feet high to boot stage (where the grain head is starting to emerge from the top of the plant, depending on the length of your growing season, which in our area, waiting til it re-boots from the regrowth is possible-- in shorter growing season areas, you'd likely have to cut it sooner... course the sooner you cut it, the higher the quality of the forage will be, but at less tonnage yield per acre)... It's best to get it before the stalks get too big around, as the bigger the stalks are, the less palatable the forage is (if you're chopping it for silage or green chop it doesn't matter, for dry hay, the bigger the stalks the harder it is to get dry enough to bale). Also the smaller the stalks, the easier it is to dry without a conditioner, and the more leaf content you'll have, which is where the quality and feed value really is anyway.

Doing sorghum like this will produce hay as good in quality if not better than sorghum/sudan... (especially sorghum/sudan that has gotten too tall and stemmy and old, which a lot of folks tend to let it get because they're trying to maximize tonnage...)

In a bad pinch like a drought, corn stalks and cut sorghum stubble hay (directly behind the combine) has SOME feed value, but it's very low. Still, it's a filler, and I've heard of guys up-ending a round bale, pouring a five gallon bucket of molasses lick on it and letting it soak in for awhile, and then setting it out to feed dry cows... it'll keep 'em alive and their bellies full, but that's about it. It's a good filler to spread "the good stuff" a little thinner and make it stretch by keeping their bellies full...

Best of luck to you... but I wouldn't do this without SOME market for it beforehand... especially since you don't have your own animals to feed it to or use it for bedding...

Later! OL JR


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## Tx Jim (Jun 30, 2014)

Maize(milo) stalks need to be baled with some moisture content in them or cattle will refuse to eat them unless on a starvation diet.


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## luke strawwalker (Jul 31, 2014)

Wow, didn't realize this thread was a revival of something I'd already posted to...

Oh well... Later! OL JR


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## mlappin (Jun 25, 2009)

We bale our stalks directly behind the combine as wet as possible then wrap.

Cows lived on nothing but stalk thru the summer of 2012.


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## Gearclash (Nov 25, 2010)

Feeder cattle eat tub ground cornstalks just fine in a TMR. Personally like to see maybe 1/4-1/3 of the "hay" in a feeder cattle ration be ground stalks once they are on feed, particularly in cold weather. I don't get to make that call though.


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