Doug Gaswick | Courtesy Photo
Tuesday was a busy one at Imperial Beef when 329 trucks came in with loads of wet corn, working well into the evening hours to get the crop delivered.
Diane Stamm | The Imperial Republican
The corn pile at Imperial Beef continues to grow as they’ve hit the peak of deliveries to the feedlot north of Imperial. On Sunday, a pen of cattle isn’t bothered by the activity behind them.
Pile it on—corn keeps coming
A mound of wet corn is growing quickly at Imperial Beef as area farmers and truck drivers keep Highway 61 busy bringing the grain to the feedlot.
The feedlot, 11 miles north of Imperial near the county line, is hitting its peak this week on the amount of wet corn coming in, said Doug Gaswick, controller at Imperial Beef.
As of Tuesday night, 3.2 million bushels of wet corn had been received.
During the height of the deliveries, he said they’ll handle an average of 300 trucks a day.
Tuesday was a really big day, Gaswick said, with 329 trucks in and out with loads of corn.
He expected another big day of deliveries Wednesday.
“We are hitting our peak right now,” he said.
The corn coming in is about a week late this year, Gaswick said, and the first 10-14 days were slow because of this year’s conditions.
“We typically start getting corn the week after Labor Day, but this year’s a little later. We really didn’t get going until a couple of weeks ago,” he said.
Imperial Beef normally gets about 25% of its entire pile of wet corn from the dryland crop, but due to the drought, they took in only a few dryland bushels this year. Yields are also down, even on irrigated acres, he said.
However, they still hope to hit the 5 million bushel goal.
“Gosh, our farmers have really been helping us out,” he said.
Work on the pile by feedlot employees is a daylong process. They quit about 9 p.m. each night, he said.
As the trucks dump the corn, payloaders move it into one of two big corn grinders, and the tractors with dozers or speed-movers push/pull the ground corn up the pile and it is packed throughout the process, Gaswick said.
“All of the corn is ground which gives it better feed-value—the cattle are able to digest it better and get better performance out of it,” he said.
With rationing, Imperial Beef uses the corn pile throughout the year. Gaswick said they just finished up last year’s crop last week.
Imperial Beef receives wet corn from a 30-mile radius of the feedlot.