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Northern Wisconsin counties getting started on corn silage

A northwestern Wisconsin farmer and custom harvester says harvesting corn silage starts this week.

Andy Bensend farms between Dallas and Prairie Farm. He tells Brownfield, “The guys on the lighter soils down around Durand, they’ve been at corn silage for a little while but we’re always a week or ten days behind them, and so we’re really just getting rolling here in Barron County.”

Bensend says he’s seeing a lot of corn diseases this year. “There’s a lot of rust. There are scatteres spots with some other diseases. Northern corn leaf blight is always present, and tar spot is showing up here and there, especially on the BMR hybrids.”

Bensend this year’s corn will be a good crop but nowhere near a record crop with a fair amount of tip back.  He believes extra rain leached some nitrogen away from the root zone, and the farmers practicing minimal tillage and good soil health practices will see the benefits this year. 

Bensend says fungicide applications have been important this year, and he’ll be closely watching performance ratings on corn hybrids before planting next spring.