With the summer weather that most of the corn crop experienced there has been a lot of phone calls from producers asking for an appraisal from our adjusters to help them determine whether to harvest the crop for grain or to chop/bale it for forage. Here is an easy way for producers who want to get a good idea of what their corn yield could be. This formula is not a valid calculation for crop insurance purposes and is only intended for your use in yield estimation. However, you always have the right to have an adjuster come look at your crop.
Estimating Bushels per Acre / Corn
Pick and husk all the harvestable ears in a row sample that is 17 1/2 feet long. Weigh the good ears and multiply by 14.3 to get the estimated bushels per acre. (This formula is based on 30” row spacing with 30% moisture or less)
These are samples that were taken from one of our producer’s fields. Using the method described above we picked all the ears from 2 separate 17.5 foot strips from that field. Pictured at top are the ears collected from each strip and below is the shucked ears from each sample. The circled ears are the harvestable ears for each sample. After weighing the harvestable ears and doing the calculation, Sample 1 gave us an estimate of 15.3 bushel per acre and Sample 2 gave us an estimate of 10.7 bushel per acre. Keep in mind that this is just an estimate of what this particular field could produce. Quality issues were not factored in and there could most certainly be some.
