Racoons and squirrels have done the most damage to our corn over the years. Birds also like to eat it, but they peck holes in the husks, rather than peel them back. Deer will sometimes work on corn but they don't peel the husks either. Sounds like either racoons or squirrels, neither of which would be deterred by a 6' fence.

Darn coons. That momma coon probably came by a few nights ago and sampled a few ears that you did not notice. Then she said "hey kids in about 3 days this corn will be ready!" And then about 3 nights later they came out and brought the whole family with them. Thats how it seems to go with coons. If you catch the first few ears peeled back early on you can set traps right then and catch them before they take the rest of the crop. We were raised on corn. If we did not get the coons we did not get the corn.

Thanks all for your comments. I don't grow much corn because it doesn't agree with me so much, but it is still frustrating to have that happen. The one ear they left was part of my dinner - and delicious.

The two methods I use to get corn without sharing it with the raccoons are:

1) I plant the last week of March (my average last frost date is March 28th), plant a variety with a short DTM, and harvest no later than Memorial Day weekend most years. Coons do not expect corn until June or July, so they aren't a problem with an early corn planting; and

2) I grow within a corn cage, which is simply a fenced-in garden plot that not only has fencing on all 4 sizes, but also a sturdy gate (held closed with bungee cords to ensure the coons cannot find a way to squeeze between the gate and the fence pose), and with fencing (chicken wire) over the top. The top fencing has to be wired securely to all the fencing so the coons cannot squeeze between the garden fence itself and the corn cage wiring.

In the newer garden area out back, an 8' tall fence has kept the coons out, surprisingly, and I have been able to grow early, mid-season and late corn back there without the coons getting it. I figured they'd just climb the fence, but they haven't.

Another method I used (and I used it in the back garden the first two years because I was afraid the coons would climb the 8' tall fence) was to start seeds of milk thistle in paper cups and transplant the young plants into the ground at the same time that I planted as the corn. I planted a double row of milk thistle so that it made a solid, short wall around the corn that was about 3' wide. The prickly leaves helped protect the corn from all the critters who otherwise try to eat it, and the gardener himself or herself has to work very carefully around the milk thistle or risk hurting themselves. Unfortunately, milk thistle won't work in all situations. It needs very well-drained soil and it needs drier weather. In a wet year like this, it just rots off at the soil line.

Sometimes you can deter coons by spraying the ears with hot pepper wax, but in a rainy year, the hot pepper was product washes off. If you do this, always wear gloves when harvesting and husking the corn so you don't get the pepper wax on your hands.

Dawn

Raccoons can tear open chicken wire. If they want something in there, they'll get it.

That may be, but they've never torn into the chicken wire "roof" over the corn cage in the 6 or 7 years I've used this method, so I'm happy with it. Before I started using this method, they often got all the mid-season and late-season corn. I suspect they haven't been able to find a way to balance on top of the sturdier woven wire fencing that makes up the side walls of the corn cage long enough to tear through the chicken wire roof.

Coons are horrible here and you don't get a corn crop at all if you don't find a way to combat them. The brother of a friend of ours had a really bad coon problem and was determined to defeat them. His corn patch was probably a quarter-mile long and a hundred feet wide, but he lives even closer to the Red River than we do and the coon population at his place is even worse than at ours. He trapped and shot a coon every single night for 18 or 19 nights in a row and still didn't get a single ear of corn. Clearly he barely made a dent in the coon population at his place that year. If I had been him, I probably would have put up an electric fence with several strands fairly close together and low to the ground because he had plenty of space to do that.

That indicates to me a lack of predators in the area. Seems bobcats and pumas are actually worth having around.

Has your brother considered hot wire?