138 PRODUCTIVE FARMING 



SCORE CARD FOR CORN JUDGING. 



Perfect 



Score. 



1. Trueness to Type or Breed Characteristics 10 



2. Shape of Ear 10 



3. Purity of Ear. (a) Grain 5 



(b) Cob 5 



4. Vitality or Seed Conditions 15 



5. Tips 5 



6. Butts 5 



7. Kernels, (a) Uniformity 5 



(6) Shape 10 



8. Length of Ear 5 



9. Circumference of Ear 5 



10. (a) Furrows Between Rows 5 



(b) Space Between Tips of Kernels at Cob 5 



11. Proportion of Corn to Cob 10 



Total Points 100 



Testing Seed Corn. — No farmer can ^afford to use corn 

 for seed which is not the best he can get. It should be care- 

 fully selected along the lines laid down in the rules given in 

 this chapter. Then it should be subjected to a germination 

 test of the individual ears. Any method that will enable a 

 corn grower to know the percentage of germination of each 

 individual ear of corn can be used to make the test. If you 

 test five kernels taken from different parts of an ear of corn 

 and two of them do not germinate and three do, it is a pretty 

 good indication that sixty per cent of the kernels of the ear 

 will grow and forty per cent will not. This means that four 

 hundred out of a possible one thousand kernels of that ear 

 will fail if planted in the field. The farmer using such corn 

 for seed would get only a sixty per cent stand, which means 

 a very poor crop. He would waste two days out of every 

 five spent in cultivating such a field, because two-fifths of 

 the field would be bare ground. 



How to Test. — The ears of corn may be tested as clearly 

 shown in Fig. 74. First arrange a germination box; any 

 shallow flat box will do; place in it some clean wet sand or 

 wet sawdust to a depth of about one inch ( Fig. 75 ) . 



