Does anyone here have this kind of problem to contend with ( birds eating the corn) ? First the canadian geese top off all the plants in the spring, summer was kind of dry, but this being a bottom field, moisture usually holds in the worst conditions, the stalks and the ears looked good at the end though, then these massive flocks of grackles, blackbirds, some red winged mixed in, swoop in, and seem to decimate the corn, I looked at the 7 or so acres here yesterday, and it looks like 1/2 to 3/4 of every ear is cleaned off, it's hard to believe. I'm pretty sure that like most, he waits until it's dry enough before combining, so as to not have to deal with that extra step of drying the grain, but it's like a catch 22, leave it in the field too long, and the yields are looking like they're going to be reduced to nothing. I'm not sure how the other nearby fields have been effected by this, but I never recall seeing such a problem like this, seems that if the timing of things were different, planted earlier, harvested earlier would avoid the geese, and if things went well while growing, matured earlier, harvested earlier before those migrating flocks do their thing, just the outside rows would get hit by the squirrels. I have not seen my neighbor the farmer out with the combine except once, one field was down a few weeks ago and that was it, out of several hundred acres, by the time he gets over here, hard to imagine what will be left of it. I rememeber years ago, corn standing until december sometimes without the wildlife taking so much. I'd hate to see this field not get used, and would love to figure out how to mitigate the problem.
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