 One of the first things I'd like to do is thank all our sponsors that helped us put together and provide input and money for today's event. I'm going to just read through the list. South Dakota Wheat Commission, Farm Credit Services of America, Wheat Growers, Mustang Seed, Monsanto, Prairie State Seeds, Next Level Ag, LLC, Millboard Seeds, La Crosse Seeds, Dakota Best Seed, Agronomy Plus, Farmers Alliance, Mitchell, First Dakota National Bank, C&D Operations and Davis and County Amplement, Scott Supply, Crop Tech, Ducks Unlimited, Aurora County Conservation District, Davis and County Conservation District, Hanson County Conservation District, South Dakota Noctil Association, SDSU Extension, USDA and NRCS and Pioneer Hybrids of Dupont. So let's give them all a welcome round of applause. Thanks Dan. You know, I want to thank you all for being here and I'm going to make a point here in a little bit that some of you are going to go home and you're going to think I'm nuts and you're always going to remember me as that crazy guy that talked about putting cows on corn. You should write that down. And Ken Olson sat here this morning and said, you know, the two pounds of corn or the no corn with protein supplement versus the ten pounds of corn, maybe you're getting maybe over in the dairy territory and that might be appropriate because I grew up on a dairy farm so maybe that's where it comes from. That's where I'm from, Corsica, South Dakota. We refer to this general region of South Dakota as the tropics. You get about 100 miles north of there. You start getting it in the tundra. So, you know, two days ago it was 75 degrees there. Today we're supposed to get about a foot of snow so it can vary quite a bit. Background to my operation, you know, I run my, I'm originally from the area. My dad has an operation there. I held my dad with his operation and I have my own operation. We kind of trade back and forth with labor and machinery. I give him a little more labor. He gives me a little more machinery. I manage grazing on lease, I guess, like have in May and June. I switched to doing that a couple years ago. I really like that. As someone who has an additional job off-farm, it's really nice not to be needing to check the cattle repeatedly. And in May and June, that's when the deer are having their fawns, the buffalo or cabin out in custer and it works out really nice for us. We manage the grazing on lease land in the summer. One seven day moves. This is one of our summer lease pastures. There you can see our polywire and we have just above ground pipe that we run to get them water for that. And yes, those are cows. That's about five foot tall grass. We utilize a lot of crop residue in the fall and winter. I've run a lot of corn stocks. I'll talk a little bit more about that. We don't have a set weaning date. It's kind of a shifting target depending on what the conditions are that year. And we really strive to be efficient with our purchased inputs and machinery use as a beginning farmer. We're really looking at economics over and over again. So the first point I want to make is what are your goals? That's going to determine a lot of what you want to do. You've heard today about swath grazing, bale grazing, cover crops, and all of those are really good options. But they all have a really specific outcome. You're looking for a specific thing. Cover crops can add a lot of diversity, ground cover into your operation. Bale grazing is a great way to bring in nutrients and spread them out on the land. So swath grazing can spread those nutrients while also keeping down some of your costs on the harvesting. Those are all really good options. And I'm not trying to take away from any of those when I start talking about grazing corn. I'm just saying this is another option for people with a specific goal, I guess. Doug talked a little bit about catalyzing canada thistle. This is a canada thistle plant. You can see a couple of them in there. Yes, you can see that they pretty much came in there and chose canada thistle. Thistle was taken last year by Cal's lead canada thistle. I have very little issue with it anymore. So you can see some back there that still have flowers on them. If they really get to a point where it looks like, okay, I've got too many, I'll go out there and I'll cut them. Usually I don't, usually I have to spray. The grazing management has kind of done away with that for me. Goal setting, this is kind of the goal setting. If you look at goal setting, the holistic management, those of you familiar with Alan Savory talks about the triple bottom line, social, financial and environmental. So we base some of our goals and our plans based off these. And I use this quote out of proverbs. I could have picked any of them. But without vision, without goals, you aren't going to succeed. So some of our goals, just to give you a background again, how we got to grazing corn, grazes many of the days of the year as possible to keep the costs down. Our goal is to feed hay less than 45 days a year. I could probably get that under 30 and half. It's just kind of the slush times when you're transitioning from one to the other or it gets muddy. We deal more with mud it seems like than anything, especially when you're dealing with cropland. Appropriate rest in our grazing rotation for plant vigor, livestock health, wildlife and soil health. I actually have a wildlife degree. That's what I went to school for. So I'm really interested in wildlife and that's also why I'm interested in livestock. And so we try to allow appropriate rest and then we try to have an enterprise that we're telling to be involved in. One thing we did about three years ago, we quit fly control in the summer because it was hurting our dung beetles. And you could see we had four or five year old dung pads left out in our pastures yet. And so we did away with that and I can tell you we have, you really can't find manure pads in my pasture anymore. And so it's really helped. So what we did instead is I started building tree swallow boxes and an adult pair of tree swallows, they tell me only about 3,000 flies a day. So it's helped. I'm not going to tell you I don't have any flies, but I really don't think I have any more flies than my neighbors. And one thing about when you're this far north, your tree swallows like to leave about the middle of July. And that's, you know, so they do pretty well at first, but by the middle of August it's a little bit more touch and go. This is my oldest Lily. She's very unhappy because she doesn't get to look in the bird box and see the baby birds. That's my middle one Brianna. I have three children, three girls. So before I get in the corn grazing, here's my warning for you. I'm not a nutritionist. So take that with a grain of salt. I do not know your cows or your version of risk. If your cows have never touched corn, you might think twice before putting them on a corn grazing situation. And I may not have the same goals as you. We already talked about goal setting. And I have done some crazy things that I've turned out well. We're not going to get into that today, but I have. So a little bit of history just for my winter feeding. I bought cows in 2011. That makes me a beginning farmer, I guess. Drought in 2012, of course, we, I think we had a little bit worse than you did in northern South Dakota and southern South Dakota. Feed was very expensive and a lot of our corn was harvested for silage. I used a lot of corn stocks, but that year they just weren't available. So it was very expensive to feed cattle that year. In 2014, of course, we had a good cattle market. We had some more summer drought that year. Had some good fall rains with muddy fields and the rainy fall. Two years ago, our corn stocks were almost worthless. The cattle did very, very poorly on them. And then we had on top of that a cattle market drop. And so you start to see the economics change. And this year we've had snow, ice, mud. You guys have probably had a worse year than we have, but I've dealt with a lot of mud. And when you're dealing with cropland situation, that's not great. So what this was down to is that year to year, we really have inconsistent winter grazing opportunities, especially when it relates to grazing crop stubble down there. And so I was looking for something that was a little more consistent, a little more forgiving, I guess. And why I thought I could graze corn. The biggest thing here is other producer experience. I know of other producers that have done it. I'm looking them up all the time trying to figure out how I can do this thing. Originally, they told me, man, you've got to be moving those cows every day. And I bought that. I said, okay, I've got to move cows every day. And I did. And it's kind of hard to get excited about moving cows every day unless you can push a button and make it happen, which Dwayne's going to talk about. But you start to learn a few things. This first year I had cows, man, you could go out in the field that I turned them into and you could fill one of those molasses tubs just in an area like this. There was so much corn on the ground. And the thing I learned there is when cows eat a lot of corn, they will eat a lot of salt. They went through a 50-pound block of salt every day. And that was for 40 cows. They just pounded through the salt. In 2014, I grazed a chopped corn field. There was basically no stover left, but it had bad ear drop again. That was a really dry year. For some reason, the ears dropped off. They could go to bean stubble. That's where I was watering them so they could fill up a little bit. My cows came off that field the fattest I've ever seen them. That was about 40 days on about 50 acres. There was that much corn left out there. And it was just corn, you know, just corn cobs. So I've not, at any time I turn cows into corn stocks, they're going for the years. You know, that's just, they like it. But I've not lost a cow to acidosis. I know they have varying levels of tolerance. They've, you know, they've gotten used to corn. And I don't, I try to make sure that they don't have just corn or that they have another option. So why did I decide to graze corn? Availability, we talked about inconsistency. Availability is a big thing. It's going to be there, I live more in southeast South Dakota and we're trying to look like Iowa, I guess. So we have a lot of corn down there available. So on the landscape it's there. And in all kinds of weather, you grow corn. That year is usually what, three to four feet off the ground. You can get a lot of snow before that corn. The main nutritional part of that plant is unavailable. And that's a pretty big deal when you start talking about winter grazing opportunities. You know, I have nothing against it. I like cover crops. I like the swath grazing. But you get two, three feet of snow and it gets pretty tough to make use of that. But the corn, it's still there. Nutrition, like I said, we switched to May, June calving. I want to try and keep my cows on the calves through the, calves on the cows through the winter. And that's what I did this year. And I thought it went pretty well. We'll see a picture of that later. Flexibility. If you plan to cover crop, you're going to graze it or roll it. I mean, there's, you don't have a plan B for making an economic, getting a check from it. If you leave 10 acres of corn and you can't graze them, say you, you have another option, some cover crop, you can always go harvest it in the spring and you'll still get, you know, you'll, you'll lose some to wildlife and stuff, but you'll still get it back. You turn nutrients to the same acres. That's going to be how you manage it. I didn't do a great job of managing, returning nutrients to the same acres. You can see back here, this is a pasture they could get into for water. We'll see a better picture of that later. But they, you know, they loafed in the pasture. Most of their nutrients ended up there. This is a back wire. You can see it was getting muddy here. There's my tracks. Those aren't as deep as they look, but I did back fence this and this was a big thing. I dealt with more ice than anything. This was a warm spell we had. Wildlife, another thing, you know, just to get food plots and you're leaving them through the end of pheasant season. I know there's some pheasant hunters in here, some guys that get pheasant hunters in. You leave your food plots. Maybe you just go out and graze them after that and it's a win for the wildlife. We were, we were shooting pheasants out of here and we had deer in here up until I basically, well, up until it was gone with the pheasants. If an ear of corn hit the ground, it was clean the next day. It didn't stick around. So there's a lot of pheasants using it. There it goes. Well, okay, this is a big reason why I graze corn. The cost or the value. Doug mentioned this morning 10 pounds of corn. I'll carry a cow. That's kind of what I've heard too. If she doesn't have a calf on her. That's the general recommendation there. So my goal with a calf on her is to give 12 to 14 pounds. And so I'm looking at about a quarter of a bushel. I just looked up what it was at the local elevator. They're giving 320 a bushel. That's 80 cents of cow per day. Comparison hay feeding costs. Most of the winter at the Dakota Hay Auction in Corsica, 80 bucks a ton will buy you decent quality hay. You can see in the calculations there, it's almost double to feed hay. And that, you know, that doesn't involve this. You're going to have some labor to get out there and move fence. You are. This you're going to have labor to get out there, start a tractor, feed the hay. All the manure in the spring. Corn stalk rent. I like corn stalks. I use them when I can. I've heard all kinds of range for what people are paying for them. Doug said 70 cents. I've heard as low as 30. But your quality and your availability start to get questionable depending on your weather conditions. So in Potter County, I asked Kate to send me some data for Potter County. So these are your three year averages for 2013 to 2015. About six to seven acres to run a cow calf for the summer grazing period. Of course, it's going to be more in the west and less in the east. About two tons per acre hay yield. That's your average of alfalfa and grass. And about 123 bushel per acre corn yields. So, a quick scenario. 300 cows would require about 2,000 acres of grass for summer grazing. But could winter for 150 days on just over 80 acres of corn. Giving them 12 pounds of corn per head per day. That's where, you know, I'm not telling you you should go out and plant a bunch of corn and graze it. You know, you don't need a lot of corn. You don't want to be covering a lot of ground when you're corn grazing. And that's kind of a valuable thing, especially when you're young, to not need as many acres to produce the feed for the winter. Enough hay to feed for the same period would be cut from about 400 acres. So potentially, you know, if you were doing this anyway, say you had a mixed crop livestock operation, now you can graze those 400 acres. Maybe out a few cattle. Maybe help bring another family member back into the operation. Time and machinery investment. Of course, you're going to put in time and machinery to hay. You're also going to put in time and machinery to plant. I didn't do an analysis of that. You can do your own numbers depending on what interests you have. So you have options. You can do daily moves where you set up your perimeter before the ground freezes and then do your daily allocations. I use a cordless drill to put it into ice, frozen ground, whatever. And then your post comes right out the next day. It works really well for me. You can do multiple-day or weekly moves. I got a little bit into that this year. The Canadians do it. Be aware of your risks. Your cows are going to waste a little more. Depending on how much you're giving them in terms of corn grain, you're probably going to have to give them a little bit more. When you're giving them 10 pounds of corn, and like Doug said, you've got 10 pounds of corn, 10 pounds of stover, 20 pounds is not going to fill a cow. They're going to be hungry, but their nutritional needs are met. You're going to have to up that if you're going to start moving less than daily or more off less than daily, because they're going to eat as much as they can to get full. And by day four or five of a week, they aren't going to have a whole lot left. That's where you may have to give them a few more pounds of corn. Multiple-week moves. Again, this is something the Canadians do. I actually just talked to a gentleman out by Rapid City here a couple days ago. He does this and does really well. He said he's got 5,000 acres of grass and 200 acres of corn that he winters on. That carries his cows. And that's pretty amazing when you think about it that you could take your best piece of ground basically and grow your winter feed on it. It would be such a small part of it. You can give cattle an addition area for roughage. Again, this is just for gut fill. It doesn't have to be high quality. You're getting your nutritional quality out of the corn grain. Feed hay if you want to. I did feed alfalfa because I left the calves on. I needed that protein level to be high enough. And then you could use snow. Doug said he does it. I don't trust it yet, so I haven't gotten that far, but maybe in the future. General considerations, planning. If there's one significant point, I think we could all take away from this is what Casey said this morning. You got a plan. Dan, if you decided you want a winter graze, a full season cover crop next winter, why do you have to decide that? Right now. Yeah, absolutely. So planning, even if you want a grazed corn, you've got to plan ahead. You probably need to be planning at least mid-summer so that you can be prepared for where you're going to have fence, water, shelter. Snow drift. Think about if you're right next to a bean field and you get a foot of snow and the wind blows, now you're going to have drifts five foot deep in there. Planning. You can gradually increase your grain for rumin. Again, just protecting from acidosis. A lot of people recommend that. I'm probably not as good as I should be at that. And then just looking at what your other options are for winter grazing. What's your goal here? This is Dwight D. Eisenhower. You added a quote from him a little bit ago. I really like this one. Plans are usefulness, but planning is indispensable. Things change, so be ready to adapt. I thought this was kind of a neat idea. Our plan is to get from point A to point B. Find out there's a few pitfalls along the way. Sometimes we think we're going to start here and we're going to end on this date and they're going to get this much corn every day and then you get a snow storm and maybe you're gone for a day. The point is you got closer to your goal than where you were at the beginning. And that's kind of where I stand, I guess, on that. Example plan. I don't know if we need to go into this, but if you're looking at 10 acres, 100 bushels an acre, and you're going to give 12 pounds per cow per day, your grazing area is about 100 foot by 100 foot. So plan to have your fences set up so you can move that. Set up your fences so daily moves have short stretches of fence. I don't want to move a quarter mile of fence and I think Larry does, but that's something I try to stay away from if I can. So what I did this year, December 30th I moved cattle into the corn. This is a standing corn. It was about 100 bushels an acre corn. 55 days of feed projected at that time on what I had. I started them at about 6 to 7 pounds. I didn't want to drop them right into the corn. They were coming off corn stalks. There wasn't a lot of grain left in the corn stalks for fill. I had trouble with fence, so some were getting all they wanted. I had about 2 to 3 inches of ice and I watched cows. I had moved cows and I'd have cows go up there and they'd start reaching across that fence because I had corn right there. And they'd blink a little bit and they'd just keep going. And so I ended up with 3 wires, a hot on the top and bottom and a ground in the middle. Of course I had calves. I think without calves I could have got away with 2. And my cows respect electric fence. I don't have the really high dollar electric fence or fencer yet, but my cows respect it and I use it year round. But I learned that when I put up a fence I knocked down basically a four-wheeler width on the other side of it so that they weren't reaching for it and that helped out a lot. So I quickly moved them up to 12 pounds per pair per day because that was my goal. So once they started getting the corn, once that rumen gets switching, I wanted to get them on to that and I was given alfalfa twice a week for protein and gut fill. I would think about distillers but the thing about distillers is not going to give them anything to be satisfied with. I talked to my nutritionist. He said, yep, alfalfa is your best way to go dollar for dollar. I said, yep, alfalfa is your best way to go dollar for dollar. I said, yep, alfalfa is your best way to go dollar for dollar. I said, yep, alfalfa is your best way to go dollar for dollar. And then I went to every other day moves. My initial plan was to get to every fourth day moves. I never got there because the weather didn't cooperate with me. The weather was changing. Next thing you know it's going to snow. I don't want them to be knocking years on the ground because when my fence looked like and this was the part I was grazing I just ran my fences across this way. I had to speed up because of the mud of course like I said it was 75 degrees we don't have frost in the ground right now not a lot and I didn't want them tracking that up so I I spent them up and they were getting over probably closer to 25 pounds per pair per day and they did just fine none of them keeled over dead but they were used to corn and they were you know their rumen was functioning on corn so I ended up with 47 days feed that's where you know I originally projected I have another week of feed but I I came up a little short and I didn't feel bad about that I guess one thing I didn't plan for and should in the future I didn't have a plan to take them off of corn back to forage and that switching that rumen back was pretty hard on them going up this high and that's something that I'll have to plan for in the future because that was definitely not in my plan at the time couple pictures of what it looked like there's the cows shortly after I moved them in there's my fence that I put in you can see that corn that's some of the better corn that they grazed this to turn from you know standing corn to this took about five hours you know that was I went back to them out because you can see it starting I figured it was going to get muddy that day you can see all the ice again and so they knock it down pretty fast there's actually more residue there than maybe it looks like just because a lot of it is under the ice lessons learned for me I guess just like I said it was the first year I tried it ground wire isn't a good energizer when you have ice and snow cows they'll test it even cows that are used to electric fence keeping the salt buffer and mineral available that way a cow can balance yourself this is a salt I feed a sea salt and this is a baking soda it's a rumen buffer and that's when my nutritionist has me on and I could tell you from one day to the next they basically emptied this and that was where I went okay they got enough and I think this was about days after I went to every other day moves where that first day they could eat all the corn they wanted and so I made sure I kept it in there I put another 50 pounds of salt in there and it lasted the rest of the great you know the rest of the 40 days they hardly touched it again but they were able when they needed it to get that salt I suppose it helped to make their rumen function and keep them keep them from getting too acid in their rumen keep your options open adapt you know we had some issues you're going to have issues yield is not consistent across the field just like it's not consistent across the county plan for it I didn't do a great job of that either I thought hey we're going to have it's 100 bushel an acre well it might be 80 bushel over here and 120 there and that was just something I didn't plan for it very well cows will be hungry so I was ready to move on two occasions I had to be gone so I asked my dad to just give them a bale of hay while I was gone to help you know carry them through the next day they'd be full they go in there they grab those ears of corn and they'd roll them in their mouth those of you who have seen cows do this and the corn starts falling out the side of the mouth and that's what they do if they're full they're just going for that extra energy and they're in there and their room and it had room in it they just eat the whole ear and it worked out a lot better that way the soil structure residue mat that's going to help you a lot with mud this is a cow I don't know how well you can see her this is her calf that she carried she's probably 12 to 1250 she's not a huge cow she has no teeth so just keep that in mind for how well she did so and I carried there's a yearling back there she's a bread heifer I carried those and they came through really well on this too just in the same program and this was the last day so this was the last day of grazing you can see we've got water and no snow that was a week and a half ago or something so they came through pretty well so again back to how we started to have a goal know what your goal is make a plan it took me from the time I heard about corn grazing to actually do it it was about four years I had to have a plan and I never got a plan put in place early enough and then adapt because things are going to change you're going to get three feet of snow or something like that that's me if you have any questions you can call me email me this is another thing I'm looking for earthworms these are chickens we raise chickens it's an odd deal we can talk about that another time if you were just going to get started like Doug said we've got a 12 row head so what would happen if you did 12 and left 12 and then figure out how many acres the cows need I mean would something like that work to get started and then like do an 80 and leave grace 40 and not what's your thoughts on that how do you do that now you've got additional roughage for them to pick up because you've got part of it the piece I was my dad was grazing the corn stocks I was grazing the standing corn otherwise I would have been probably utilizing that forage just to help fill them up and maybe that wouldn't have worked as well simply because like Ken was saying this morning maybe they would have gotten their room and they wouldn't have been actually balancing the ration well but absolutely you can do that my stretch it was 50 rows wide is what it was I would go less 12 would be great because I wouldn't have to have a post in the middle I could run from one fence to the other fence without any post in the middle and that would be nice Dwayne's laughing I think he disagrees with me but yeah you could do that and like I said you're going to be adjusting to the day you can checker it out like what Doug did and that's great but then you're locked in whether you've got 100 cows or 150 cows or if something changes you're kind of locked into that size if you're going to do the adjusting sizes like I did just make sure you're knocking it down in front of them so that they're not reaching so much that made a big difference for them staying in how'd you get them to the corn I know you feed them corn but how did you do that I started them right in the standing corn and then I was just giving them hay to fill them because they came off corn stocks they were grazing corn stocks before that and I just started them on the standing corn I know guys that go out and feed them with a feed wagon again I don't have a lot of the fancy stuff so not that I couldn't have done it that way but I just I was giving them hay and starting them on corn and I just moved them up quickly because like I said in the past I've grazed them on some really high corn stuff and I'm not even convinced that I needed to start them lower I may have just been able to start them right away and made sure that they had those the forage to keep their rumen full and then the salt the buffer to help balance the rumen I talked to my nutritionist about this you know how can you get away with multiple day moves how can you get away with them I'm assuming this much his take was the whole corn doesn't have the same effect in the rumen as what ground corn does and especially dry whole corn it just it doesn't release its starch as quickly that was his take on it but I did work with him how did you want to move your wire in the field and raise an old field because you got to walk down the standing corn mm-hmm so I was asking how did I get the wire down here I just walked through and you'd be surprised how easy corn stock breaks off when it's frozen and it fall over you know and I clean it out that way like I said that's 50 rows that's two posts it takes me to spread it out it didn't take me long to move the fence I mean I could pick up the old fence the worst was the cows were always ready to move I could pick up the old fence put in a new fence in half an hour at most I always had a backup fence I always had a safety fence from right away that's a good point that way if they got through they weren't all the way through it knocking it down they were just grazing the next piece and other than the first week when I had issue once I got the the ground wire and got them used to it and learned to knock it over they didn't go through it anymore I didn't have any more issue because whatever he had it was just going to work out in this field I didn't this corn wasn't planted for grazing I guess is the point it was planted to harvest but we said hey it looks like an option for us so we chose to graze it because you're really better off getting the most production you can off off your corny because I mean you shouldn't pull back a lot on your production cost because whatever you grow it's just going to extend one note on that and I don't disagree with you you know this was 100 bushel corn and if you look pretty much everything above the ear they eat they'll eat the stock you start getting that really high bushel corn those stocks get really tough for the cows and the cobs will get really big and so that's a consideration I'm not going to say that it's a hindrance but if I had my way I'd definitely keep it in that 100 to 120 bushel for grazing purposes from my dad yes absolutely well like I said it was about with the alfalfa it was less than a dollar a day and I had calves on that so I split that cost between the cow and the calf that's where I get away from how much does it cost me to raise a cow how much buffer do they need almost none my cows are backwards on salt and buffer they get poor quality feed and they eat buffer and then they get high quality feed they eat salt which is apparently backwards from what it's supposed to be what you see there was basically what you see there that ended up being gone by the time it was done but they started that and maybe that was covered during the entire period and it wasn't much except for the one day they really went after it so it was good I had it in this situation the above ground watering system is for summer grazing so I didn't run in from a pasture tap so I can divide my pasture in the wintertime I had a frost free water just a general water livestock fountain and they were able to get back to it so let's see picture here this was the loafing pasture you can see the dairy barn for the place is actually about right here and there's a frost free water right here behind these trees so they were able to get behind the trees and get their water there I can talk to you about the above ground water line later if you want to but for this situation they didn't really apply the water though like on bad storms like they were cold I mean they still go they still go to the corn then oh they if I drive out there with the pickup right now I've got cows following me everywhere I go I was out there yesterday I let them clean up a little bit I weaned the calves after I was done with corn and so I went out there yesterday to pick up fence and they just followed me they just cleaned up some of the leaves and stuff since they had been on so much corn at the end and they kind of looked around like where's the corn where's the standing stuff but they have no issue through the snow I had some other pictures that I was going to show you of nutritional Ken talked about watching the cow pies and I watched those I absolutely kept an eye on them to make sure they were getting the protein they needed pictures of that and some pictures of we had about a foot of snow there in the middle of that it was between these two pictures we got another foot of snow but those got lost on my old cell phone so I didn't have them anymore Is there any particular direction you started on? I mean did you start on the south side of the corn and north I started on the west side and worked east because it's what worked the best for me at that time if I were going to start it if I had 80 acres and it was oriented north south I'd start on the south side because then with the north wind they're getting wind protection and then the snow blowing in it's not always blowing from where they've already grazed into the new stuff same thing east west I started from the west but I had all those corn stalks back here to stop snow for me and it worked out for me that way alright thank you