Atomic Orange Corn, good for feed?

I've seen it in the Baker's Creek catalog for a few years. Finally bought it, I think I went with 10 or 12 seed packs for my trial. It's supposed to be an early corn, 5 feet tall, with long, skinny ears. It's supposed to be higher in protein than most and higher in beta carotene than any other corn. It's a soft flint. Flints almost always have more protein and a softer flint is easier to digest. Still would ferment it though.

Being a shorter-season crop, it could be grown in shorter season climates. Flint corns are naturally more suited to cooler weather already, and I think this one was introduced out of Minnesota. Being a shorter plant, it could be grown in less fertile soils perhaps. I actually went and planted mine very tightly. Plants 6 inches apart and 12 inches between rows. I figured if it's a half-size plant, I might as well plant it at half the spacing. So far so good. It's tasseling a month before the standard corn crop here in west Michigan. It might actually work.

Thank you for posting this project and adding to our knowledge base. please fallow up with results of the trial.

Hans Quistorff wrote:Thank you for posting this project and adding to our knowledge base. please fallow up with results of the trial.

I'll try and remember to do that. The ears are just starting to fill out a tad. The pollen has been in the air for about a week. I have been trying to work with multiple corn varieties, but to avoid cross pollination have limited myself to short season  (Early Pink and now Atomic Orange) and long season varieties (Wade's Giant Indian).

Hans Quistorff wrote:Thank you for posting this project and adding to our knowledge base. please fallow up with results of the trial.

I have it all harvested and tallied up. I just measured the the planting area as 13x20 feet. We harvested 22 pounds of shelled corn. I had hopped to do better. The average yield of corn for the area falls between 120 and 180 bushels an acre. We got the equivalent of 65 bushels an acre. But, we panted two weeks later than most and harvested four weeks earlier than the next earliest stand of corn in town. That timing would let us grow and kill off a serious cover crop before, and grow a second crop like turnips or even another heavy cover crop after. I harvested it all late August, just as the local sweet corn was coming in.

My biggest gripe is that there isn't a lot of corn on a cob, even the larger ones. I saw 2-3 ounces of grain per cob. The largest had 9 inches of grain but only 3 ounces once shelled. And, I got very few double ears. If I were looking for the heaviest yield of grain per square foot, while keeping to a flint corn for higher protein, I'd go back to Wade's Giant Indian. But that's a 100+ day corn and it's hard to dry out late fall.

I should yield significantly more with my Early Pink popcorn (80 day, which is fairly standard for the area), which being a flint should be higher in protein than standard. It was planted late but looks like it'll bring mostly double ears with between 3 and 5 ounces per ear, so 6 plus ounces of grain per stalk. But, it's not as early as the Atomic Orange.

The Atomic orange is definitely a useful tool of a crop and I'll keep experimenting with it for it's early harvest. We grow feed for pigs and getting some grain a month or more sooner than standard is certainly a big deal for self-sustainability. It's actually a 5 weeks sooner type of corn, it's just that it's maturing in the heat of summer instead of late summer/fall. Corn dries out super quick in that hotter weather so it's ready to be harvested extra soon because of that.

I have noticed that crowding corn leads to smaller ears, fewer ears per plant, and lower yields.