Monitoring crop moisture is essential to maintain the quality of the high moisture corn or ear corn in storage. Common mistakes are for high moisture corn to be harvested too dry and ear corn to be harvested too wet. When storing high moisture corn remember to fill fast, pack well and seal well. Avoid leaving loads out overnight or, worse, making piles of wet corn that will not be ensiled quickly. Slow filling can cause the crop to heat before the ensiling process starts.
Heating reduces the quality of the feed and allows yeasts and molds to proliferate.
This causes layers in the silo that will be lower quality and will spoil more readily during feedout. Warm temperatures during silo filling will make wet corn heat and spoil more quickly. While harvesting, also note harvest losses. The rule of thumb for harvest losses is that 20 kernels in a ten square foot area represents 1 bushel per acre. Each full size ear in this sample area represents one bushel per acre.