Larry - I've never had that problem - probably because I've only grown corn once...and it was Early Sunglow last year and although I have a LOT of crows, it wasn't a problem.

I have however, had problems with birds. One of the best "helpers" (believe it or not) is our danged Oklahoma Wind. I used cheap pie pans and silver tape like is used on duct work. (Sorry - I'm not a male that knows the right name for that stuff!) I tied the pans and long streamers of that silver tape up high wherever I had a T-post. I also used an inflatable owl (I know - it's supposed to only scare wood-peckers & snakes but I thought what the heck!). When the wind would come sweeping down the plain - all that flew and glistened and the owl seemed to "fly"...and I didn't have trouble with the birds after that. Thanks goodness because I was just about to resort to a really corny looking Scarecrow.

Hope you find a solution!

Paula

Thanks, Paula. I have foil tape and foil here, also T-post and binder twine. I will string some up tomorrow and see what happens.

On another note, it looks like something is eating my sweet potatoes, I expect its deer.

Larry

Larry,

At what stage are they getting your corn? Are they getting small sprouts from recently seeded corn? Or are they taking small ears that aren't even completely pollinated yet? Or are they taking kernels out of almost mature ears?

I only have crow problems with young spouts, and have worked around that by mulching newly planted corn beds. The crows can easily "see" new corn plants sprouting in bare soil, but when I mulch the bed with grass clippings or hay, they don't bother the young plants. I think they think in that case that they are looking at green grass sprouting in a field of dormant grass.

My bigger trouble with corn is raccoons. I'll trade you 15 raccoons for 15 crows any day of the week. This year we caged the corn once the raccoons started pulling ears, so we got almost all the early corn after the coons got the first few ears. Our corn cage is just wire fencing on all 4 sides and a chicken wire top, but it kept the coons out. We're getting ready to move the cage from the early corn bed (we harvested it a week or two ago) to the midseason corn bed. The midseason corn is tasseling and silking now, although there's a good chance the high heat here (we're over 100 most days) may prevent good fertilization).

I've used both scarecrows and bird netting to keep crows out of the corn, and the netting works better than the scarecrow. When the crows see the mockingbird sitting on the scarecrow singing, it sort of tells them they do not have to fear the scarecrow!

Dawn

Larry, those dang crows are nuisances. They were a problem for us in OK, too. They never did huge damage to any one thing but, rather, did a bit here and there, just a enough to drive me crazy. I hope they leave you alone soon.

Dawn, you have a corn cage? Please do explain! It's gotta be huge so I'm having trouble figuring out how in the world you did it without robbing a bank or using heavy equipment to be able to move it between corn crops.

Diane

Dawn, I might trade you 100 crows for 15 coons, I wouldn't even miss 15 of then. At least coons cant fly.

The corn is Early Sunglow and it is almost ready to eat. I saw one flying away with part of an ear in its beak. So far they have not moved down into the rows but I expect they will when they have stripped the perimeter.

Larry

Just couldn't resist....

Diane, It is just a wovenwire fence around a raised bed. The woven wire has 2" x 4" woven wire openings (I'll tell you why in a minute). The top is 1" chicken wire to trick the birds into thinking they can't get into the cage. Of course the birds could enter from the sides through the 2" x 4" openings, but they haven't. It has the standard 8' green metal fence posts hammered into the ground.

With the 2" x 4" openings, I can stick an arm through the cage to pull back a husk, puncture a kernel and make sure it is at the milk stage before harvesting. The trick to making this work is to have the corn planted 12-15" inside the fence so your raccoon cannot stick his paw through the 2"x 4" opening and grab ears in a similar way. This was our first attempt at a corn cage, and we didn't put it up until we noticed a raccoon (or something) had "checked" 3 or 4 ears to see if they were ready yet. They weren't even close, but it did serve as a warning to us to do something now to protect the corn or lose it all.

Once the cage was up, we didn't lose a single ear of corn from that early corn bed and I now have about 60 or 70 ears of corn in the freezer. (I realise that's not a lot, but some years the coons get every ear, and I still have mid-season and late-season corn growing.)

So, soon we'll take down the cage and move it to the bed where we have the mid-season corn. We could put up a corn cage over each corn bed and leave it, but you know, if you grow corn in the same place every year, you build up corn earworms and borers in the soil, so we're going to go with a fairly portable corn cage. Essentially, it is built about the same as a fenced chicken run, except there's not fencing on the 'floor' or a concrete floor as some people have in their chicken runs to keep animals from digging under the fence.

The mid-season corn is Texas Honey June and is silking now, so we may move the corn cage over to that bed tomorrow, because, true to its name, the Texas Honey June will be ready to harvest before the end of the month even though it seemed like it got off to a slow start this year. That was mainly due to our April rainfall being about one-quarter inch. The May rain helped it a lot, but it still was behind its usual 'schedule' although now it has caught up.

If we lived in a less extreme climate, I'd put an electric fence around it and stop worrying about the raccoons here. We've been to so many fires, including house fires and barn fires, that originated from an electrical fence that I won't have one on our property and neither will Tim. Our grasses just dry out too much and it seems like electric fences can spark a fire fairly easily.

You know, if Tim would build the Biosphere covering over my garden that I've been requesting for years, we could stop worrying about piddly little stuff like hail and raccoons.

Larry, I just havested Early Sunglow last week. It was good, and some of the ears were surprisingly large considering it was early corn and also a dry year.

I'd put bird netting or deer netting over the corn. I always have a pile of bird netting or deer netting in the barn to throw over whatever the birds are picking at.

Tulsarose, Now, can you make that scarecrow a Grim Reaper? lol We need a Grim Reaper type character that will really scare those rascals!

Dawn