Well first I would recommend Blue Clarage, Reid's Yellow, Krug's Yellow, Bloody Butcher or Greenfield Yellow as good, productive dent corns suitable for your needs as animal feed. But second I have to agree with the other posters that suggest you buy the corn. I have raised corn for my birds the past two years and have found it to be a bit labor intensive when at the small scale. This last summer I grew a row of Broom Corn (Sorghum bicolor) and found this crop a lot easier. The chickens love it and the grain is small enough that you don't have to 'crack' it before you can feed it. Good yield as well. This year I am looking around for new (to me) grains to grow for my spoiled birds. If you think of any other grains one might grow for feathered worker/pets, let me know. Brian

Peter- Do you have a handle on number that would be considered problematic? Maybe a number that even if row crops were planted in with cover crop following that wouldn't be able to take back down to borderline high/excessive? What you say is encouraging, but I'd really like to know some sort of ranges before I make my decision. Note that too much K will doubtful become a problem around here. The challenge ( I believe) is always going to be P because of the ratio in my manure and it's inclination to stay put. Thanks! Kimmsr- To a degree, I understand how excess P affects the availability of other nutrients.... although only a superficial understanding. So yes, I agree that too much P is not a good thing. That being said, I do not have a handle on the numbers that are considered excessive and where in the excessive range things start to get out of whack. Also, don't know if the P range from Low to Excessive is a linear range or Logarithmic (?) (meaning that for all practical purposes just the excessive range could be between 120 (which it is in this case & 5000 (which I highly doubt), but the fact that excessive is at the end of the range complicates things because it's unlimited. Just want to know how much my addition of 130lbs moves the bar into the excessive range. Note that my water is on a well, so yes the excess P levels concern me. That being said, if my well water is going to get contaminated it's probably from all the farm land around me rather than my relatively insignificant tract. All that aside, I still want to do "the right thing", just want to be smart about it. Note that the only way that the P levels could have gotten this high in the first place (assuming they are this high) is because of the synthetic fertilizers I added last year. Anyway, I'm trying to come up with a system now that is sustainable from my point of view and I'm attempting to start now rather than later. Thus trying to avoid adding more synthetics when possible. Meaning, they got me into this mess in the first place. I have a composting experiment going right now with the chicken manure just not sure how it's going to work. Chicken manure and pinestraw..... yeah, I know not ideal but it's what I use for bedding because I live on pinelands and it's readily available and free. Just not sure how it's going to compost. If it works, I'll be more inclined to compost. If not, less inclined to do so. That being said, I have 3 or so acres planted in oat/clover cover crops right now that I could use to make compost later- a possibility. But, that "requires" more implements/labor etc than rotating out cover crops with cash crops. Bottom line is it's more efficient for me to come up with a method that I don't HAVE to compost, especially since I have my poultry manure available. To answer your question about humus level, right now it's pretty limited and it's sand loam (mostly sand), so yes leaching is a problem. I'm steadily building the soil with cover crops and mulch but still have work to do. Thanks!

deborahnj - I see that your father was from South Carolina. I am also from SC. Growing up in the late 50's through the 70's (I am 51), we had an African American housekeeper and cook. We treated them and their families, like family. They even came to my wedding and the weddings of my brother and sister! They came to funerals in our family. We went to the funeral of one that died. We now see the other lady, Alice, in the grocery store where she works. Every time she sees my mother, she ask "where is my little girl"...meaning me. Alice was a few years younger than my own mother when she came to work for us. She had a little girl and boy of her own, and often brought them to work with her. My brother, sister and I would play with the children. Heck, Alice actually potty trained her daughter and me together. My grandfather was raised in Georgia and his descendant's had slaves. From the stories passed down, the slaves were also treated more like family, not slaves. We have an old family Bible that list the names of all the slaves, their ages, the births of their children and their deaths. I cherish that Bible and when I go over the names, I think about the lives the slaves must have had. Even though they were not free, I think that they probably had a good life under the circumstances, as I feel sure that my descendants were kind to them. Remember, not all slaves were treated the way history and the movies portray. I forgot about one other piece of artwork that I love. It's about my roots in the South. Hope y'all can read this.

Thanks for the tip. I checked out the auctions site and I find it a bit intimidating but that's just me. I have never bid on eBay either. Any advice to share about this auction site?