Help with Cracking Corn

A fellow feeder of feathered friends.

Since I'm due for the same lovely weather as you, I also made sure my feeders were at full capacity today. Two large tube feeders are filled with a mix of sunflower, cracked corn, thistle, millet, etc. The doves scavenge underneath for what everyone else drops or spills. I also keep several suet feeders and a thistle feeder full.

Not sure about the shelled corn problem. Squirrels and jays would probably go for it. Do you have anything else handy for the mourning doves? Even a few handfuls of breakfast cereal might do.

Yeah, the trouble here is that you have to buy the cheap food to get cracked corn in it. I used to have a place that did mixes for you, but, alas, the old guy retired and the new folks turned it into a gaudy pet-food-ateria (or something like that). I've got about 30 doves back here and 5 grains at a time on the anvil just ain't doing it!

Drive your car over a bag of the stuff? Might also serve as a good way to work out some stress...

Car is a good labour-saving idea, although the snow may not help that application. Bag should be a sack, some kind of cloth. Whack with your mallet or crush with car, as needed.

(Cloth sack recommended due to my own experience frustrations attempts to crush mussel shells in a plastic bag... Tie it up tight so they can't smursh around and escape the deadly blows. )

A good blender comes to mind. Frozen Drinks afterwards!

I thought of that, but Missus 45 does not let me play with the appliances. There seems to be some mystical connection between screwing up stuff in the kitchen and the possibility of ever snugging again.

Use perception management. Tell here the birds will die if they don't get their corn and then ask her if she could help by running the stuff through her blender. If she doesn't respond to that it would be odd. Don't accept damage to the blender as an excuse. Those things crush ice without problems they will certainly crack corn. Just don't run it too long or you'll have corn meal.

Here's the answer:

Hey Lynlynch, that's wicked cruel..... but if you're snowed in I guess it will help pass the time.

I get that way sometimes. I'm better if I take my medicine.

try a sledge hammer and someting for an anvil or Go to the feed mill and get some chicken scratch feed or just cracked corn. 50# chicken feed will probabky save you some money. Many feed mills have hammer mills

There are two problems in your post.

The first is "go to". Here in the sunny south (Hell, we're south of Elmira; that oughtta count for something!), we don't have highway snow blowers - just plows. So, with a little over 30" of snow so far, the crews are having trouble getting roads open. No place to put the plowed snow.

This is also suburban sprawl territory. The yuppies here abouts don't like the smell of horses, pigs, and cows, so, the nearest feed mill is about 15 miles and 14 of those are under a state of emergency declaration restricting travel.

I assume you can get to the local stores, but they are out of cracked corn. Try a substitute. Unless your south western Pa city birds are different than our north western Pa country doves, sunflower seeds and safflower seeds get them in to the feeder quicker than cracked corn. I have a bag of cracked corn that has lasted 2 months, but the safflower seeds are gone in a week. (note - I understand this isn't cheap)

OK, TVP45, the big snow is here---what was your solution? How did you end up cracking the corn and keeping the doves happy?

OK, you've got to accept that I like birds and I'm not too bright. That may go together, but we'll leave that for another day. So, I have a small anvil (maybe 10#) that I can turn upside down in a Rubbermaid box. If I use a machinist's bronze, soft hammer, I can smash at least half the grains before the others fly off (If I were truly crazy, I would spot weld some angle to the anvil base to make a retainer - not yet). I'll settle for half; the squirrels - whenever they reappear - can eat the full grains (or the crows - we're getting overfly from a rookery about ten miles away).

I may be going cabin crazy.

Of equal nutritional value and perhaps available at the feedstore is "Milo", also called Sorghum Grain.

Got a sausage maker . . . extrude the corn through it . . .

Handcrank coffee grinder?

Try it the old fashioned way! A brick on the concrete in the garage!

Hey TVP45,

Does Mrs. 45 have a "KitchenAid" mixer and a meat grinder attachment. That would probably work cracking that corn for ya, only if she let's you into the kitchen.......or you could sneak it down to the basement when she's not looking (hee hee hee), even at the risk of "sleeping on your belly" for the rest of your life???? ***LOL***

So, you're just south and over the border from Elmira NY in the southern tier, eh? Nice part of PA!!!!! I used to go down to Elmira all the time when I was a member of the National Warplane Museum when they were located at the Elmira Airport in Great Flats, just outside of Elmira and Horseheads. My old US Army Reserve Company (B Co./464th Engineering Bat'n.) was in Horseheads, but Colors retired back in '93 and the Reserve Conter closed up. Ya ever been to a NWM "Wings of Eagles" air show when the museum was open?

Have great snowy day!!! Blizzard here too in the Hudson Valley.....****UCCKKKKK!!!

oooohhh forgot about this one: If you have Brake Bender down in the workshop or garage, that'll surely crack that corn for you!

Good luck feeding those starving Morning Doves!!! Want some more? We must have a Godzillion of them around here!!!!

I realize that this may be considered somewhat off-topic, but I have to throw it in anyway:

Two farmers were discussing their tractors and machinery while waiting on orders at the local farm supply. The discussion came around to grinding corn for livestock feed on their farms. The one farmer stated that he was once grinding corn with a grinder that was powered by a flat belt driven by his "Johnny Popper" John Deere tractor. (Now, for anyone familiar with that 2-cylinder model, it was prone to some backfiring which would sometimes result in it reversing rotation and literally running backward.) This farmer stated, "She was a-runnin' along just fine, grindin' that corn, when all of a sudden she backfired and went to runnin' in reverse. You know, before I could get the dang thing shut down, it un-ground near 2 bushel of corn!"

Good one. I'll file that with the left hand drill for undrilling holes.

Next!

On the left handed drill issue. I was once trying to drill a broken bolt out of a blind hole and the only drill of the right size I could find was a left handed one from some junk assortment I had bought years ago. I put the LH drill bit into my hand drill and shifted to reverse and started drilling the bolt out and low and behold, the broken bolt suddenly came loose and unscrewed before I had drilled 3/16 into it. I don't need to tell you that I was pleased with the results!

Check this out.What's This and Where Would You Use It?

A dumb bell?

Dumb question as you are snowed in, but can you still get to a nearby farm where they have those machines for cracking oats for horse feed? That would do it.

Buy one secondhand for such events once the snow is gone. Here in Europe you can get (old!) ones that you turn by hand. My uncle had one on his farm in case the generator failed...probably an antique today, but worth nothing!!

Make pop corn and feed them that? Leave out the salt/sugar etc.

I guess the grains are too big for them to eat whole, is that right?

Good idea but:

1. TVP45 says he is in Pittsburgh - he knows what an empty steel mill is - he knows what an abandoned strip mine is - but he has never seen a farm. (a bit of Pennsylvania humor - there are 3 types of people in this state, Pittburghers, Philadelphians, and the rest of us smucks who are looked on as vermin)

2. If a farm were nearby, the doves would be eating there, not at TVP45's feeder.

Dumb question from me - what do doves do if people don't crack the corn for them?

I must admit I am used to europe's buildup, not the USA (other than a bit of west coast, Colorado and Florida experience). Thanks for the correction.....

I like your last question as well, we will see what the answer is....

From the fine folks at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology:

Mourning Doves feed their nestlings crop milk or "pigeon milk," which is secreted by the crop lining. This is an extremely nutritious food with more protein and fat than is found in either cow or human milk. Crop milk, which is regurgitated by both adults, is the exclusive food of hatchlings for three days, after which it is gradually replaced by a diet of seeds.

Mobile foraging flocks of Mourning Doves feed primarily on the ground, consuming waste grain—especially wheat and buckwheat—and weed seeds. Their crops fill quickly with seeds and digestion, aided by swallowed grit, occurs while the birds are resting, often in groups perched in trees or on wires. They readily come to feeders.

Sorry, but can they eat corn uncracked or not???? The $64,000 question!!

Jeez, do I have to do everything around here?!

From various sources:

Because their bill isn't designed to crack open large shells, they prefer the softer seeds of weeds and grasses. But they can still eat hard-shelled seeds which they swallow whole and grind up in their gizzards.

The Mourning Dove prefers to eat from the ground, and like many ground-feeding birds, their favorite foods are millet and cracked corn, but they will certainly accept a mix that has millet and corn in it.

On large properties, planting corn, wheat, or buckwheat will attract mourning doves.

Wheat and waste (cracked) corn are important in their diet, but the "natural" food is weed seed.

Therefore, ergo, ibid, op cit, and e pluribus pinhead, I would conclude that they could probably, in a pinch, survive on uncracked corn.

Many thanks for stating that. I would not have a cle where to look!!

So maybe we are all worrying for nothing?

Corn is better than its "cracked up to be"!!!

Phys,

I probably am as dumb as I look, but I actually do own an ant farm, so there!

Anyhow, I grew up on a subsidence farm. I've chopped corn and made hay (even with horses) and milked cows (once or twice I even got the right sex - damn, that hurt!).

Why, I even go to the county fairs. My favorite exhibit is the one where they have the cows that give the strawberry milk. I think they call them Jerseys?

So, thanks to everybody. I finally got to a garden supply store where I paid $4 for 5# of cracked corn. I think I usually pay either $9 or $10 for 50# at the mill. Ouch!

Anyway, the doves seem OK. Now, I'm busy trying to shelter the Carolina Wrens. This is the extreme far northern range for them, and they die off in weather like this. I'm got a water heater set up to give them open water (well, anybody that wants to drink) and I drilled a bunch of 1.5" holes in the side of my garden shed so they could go inside (except I don't know whether they need a roosting peg to use the hole - anybody?) I put some buckets and pots back under an overhung roof and they seem to like that. I saw one yesterday morning, so maybe...

Do you guys think the IRS would notice if I declared these birds as dependents on my taxes?

Roosting pegs not needed.

Carolina wrens do not have a really difficult time adapting to their environment and are fairly tolerant of human activities. In fact they often use man-made objects such as glove compartment of abandoned cars, garages, old shoes, bird houses, shelves, mailboxes, pockets of old coats, covers of propane tanks, pails, pitchers, tin cans and pretty much any kind of snug nook and cranny available as their nesting holes. Carolina wrens have also been reported nesting in old hornets nests and ivy vines that grow in porches.

Does the local Audubon Society know about you?

Interesting topic. I'm glad to hear you've solved your immediate problem, but I wonder: Is cracking corn harder than cracking peppercorns? When I make beef encrusted with cracked pepper, the little hand mill takes WAY too long. My solution: I put peppercorns in a plastic bag, put the bag in a big skillet, and crunch them with the bottom of a heavy saucepan, rocking it back & forth. Maybe corn is too tough or too smooth to crunch this way? If so, putting the corn in a heavy plastic bag would at least keep it on the anvil while you whack it.

I pour whole kernel corn on garage floor and use a turf roller to crack