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Maize Attracting Interest at Crichton
Forage Maize Day, Nov 2011 (opens in new window)
The recent Forage Maize day organized at SAC’s Crichton Royal farm, Dumfries attracted over 80 farmers interested in the latest developments on show. SAC hosts the event twice a year in conjunction with plant breeders and the manufacturers of the plastic used to help grow some maize varieties.
Dumfries & Galloway, is in UK terms, considered to be a marginal area for growing maize. With the farm experiencing one of the coldest winters in many years followed by an extremely dry spring, a wet cold summer with a significant lack of sunshine, the 2011 growing season was extremely challenging.
However for Crichton Farms Manager Hugh McClymont there are several reasons to grow forage maize for a dairy herd. There is a high yield of starch per hectare, good cobs provide 65% of the dry matter of the plant at harvest and maize, as a second forage, complements grass silage well.
Nevertheless this topsy-turvey season has taught Hugh several lessons. For example soil moisture preservation is important at sowing to allow pre-emergence herbicide to work, especially under plastic. When conditions got wetter there was significant compaction on field headlands, especially where maize followed maize. Meanwhile where severe winds blew away the plastic sheeting used to germinate and kick start the crop the old adage “knee high by 4th July” did not work as growth was slowed.
The full report on the information made available to the visitors to the Forage Maize open day is available to the right of this page.