Corn Chopping Starts - KXNet - Bismarck/Minot/Williston/Dickinson

Ranchers across the area are getting their feed supplies ready for the winter.

Loads of hay bales are rolling into the hay yard and truck loads of corn are piling up to make a silage pile.

Ag Reporter Sarah Gustin takes you south of Mandan for corn chopping.

Round after round.

Row after row.

Load after load.

These cobs are making their way from the field to the pile.

(Lynn Gustin / Chopping Corn) "40-50 years we have been making silage. I always look forward to cutting corn in the fall all the time."

These are some of Lynn Gustin's first corn chopping rounds of the year.

Gustin says a lack of rain and a few frosts are putting the push on getting this feed off the field and onto the pile.

(Lynn Gustin / Chopping Corn) "It's running pretty considering as bad as the dryness is this year. We caught a few timely rains which helped. It's all no till, you can see the difference in a lot of places this year, comparing no till where it was tilled. We got a grost now of course, so that is going to speed it up, we got to get going on it." 

Gustin hopes to chop 150 loads before calling it quits, because this feed source is one both he and the cows prefer.

(Lynn Gustin / Chopping Corn) "The way it was looking all summer, I am glad we got what we got here. It's going to make, yesterday we had it appraised, they said 17 ton to the acre, give or take a few. So yah, that's pretty darn good for the way it was looking all summer."

(Sarah Gustin / sgustin@kxnet.com) "With warm and windy conditions on days like today, Gustin knows he needs to use extra caution when out in the field."

(Lynn Gustin / Chopping Corn) "It just isn't worth it. you start something out and get it going here, especially now with these red flag warnings. If you can try and stay out. You can't be careful enough some days no matter what you do."

Gustin hopes to be finished chopping by Friday.