I put chicken manure on my garden this year for the first time. The sweet corn has done well so far. The stalks are taller than in the past and it has grown fairly fast. It is starting to form ears now and most stalks are showing 3 and 4 ears of corn. In the past before I fertilized I would usually get one nice ear and maybe a nubbin off each stalk. Never have seen 3 or 4 ears per stalk like this year.

My question is should I pull the 3rd and 4th ears off so all the energy goes to the 2 remaining ears or should I leave them alone so the coon will have plenty? I'm thinking I should pull them off because they probably won't amount to anything but I thought maybe someone on here might know.

I wouldn't. I'd worry more about stopping the raccoons.

Chicken manure is number one for nitrogen, rabbits number 2 I think, I have rabbits
I installed electric fence, so far no coons

They might not go full but they might and they shouldn't bother your other ears, if leave them alone, when the silk just starts turning brown corn really needs some water so the milk will come on in, so if it's real dry up there like it is here id water a little, other than that yeah coon patrol is in order that's what I'm up too right know!
Colt

There will always be one dominant ear, but you may get a couple other smaller ears that pollinate and or partial ears. Depending upon variety and you want to plant this same one next year you may plant the corn thicker in the row as long as you have good fertilizer. Many varieties have what is called some flex in their genetics and they put out more ears with lower density than higher density. If your variety responds to thicker planting I would plant thicker you will get more edible corn by having more stalks with 1 to 2 ears than fewer with 3 to 4 ears.

Bryce

I agree with Bryce. My experience exactly. Better yield with one major ear and one minor rather than 3-4 minor ears.

If you are going to sell it, you need the major ears. Sell the minor ears as seconds. I used to grow a few acres of sweet corn. The money was in the major ears. I made enough money to break even which was good because I really needed the money!

Check out Incredible, Bodacious, and Kandy Korn. They are the super sweet SH2 types.

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Why you see in field corn that they only ever see one ear on each stalk.

If you get the rain it will be ok. Don't think I have ever heard a farmer / gardener say "My corn has too many ears on it ". You northerners crack me up ....!!!!

Variety, many have been "bred" that way. Though two ears is common on most varieties around here.

But really one BIG thing that determines the number of ears is how close the plants are to each other. Next is how tall the plants get before the corn starts to silk out.

Around here if a farmer only had 1 ear per stalk they would go under !!!! 2 is normal , 3 is common. Field corn has the height to produce the more ears.

After a couple trial years, I moved up in the world and I planted the sweet corn with a really nice precise 2 row transport planter that had fertilizer boxes. It applied a thin strip of fertilizer just outside the seed so when the roots grew they would reach the fertilizer and really take off. I used seed plates for standard spacing in the row and 40” between the rows. I always had great results with that setup.

Geese pulled out some of the young plants. Blackbirds and crows were frequently after the corn.

It was essential to put electric fence around the field. Starting from the ground, a wire at 3”, 6”, and 9”. Then one higher up for deer. I used a 50 mile fence charger for that 2 acres. I put small dabs of peanut butter on the wire. The wires were so hot that they would sometimes kill raccoons and opossums.

Some years the sweet corn was not so good - either too little or too much rain. Actually, a couple years the sweet corn was fairly good to me - I broke even or made about $3.00. In the really good years, 2 acres of sweet corn bought me a new house, a vacation home, a new truck, an around the world vacation, and a hair transplant.

You must plant different field corn varieties in the south than in the corn belt. The disadvantage with multiple ears on corn is incomplete pollination, more fines, and higher moisture as they typically mature later if at all and all those contribute to dockage in price and higher costs in drying. The main area of the corn belt that averages 225-260 bushels per acre plant higher density varieties that give them more kernels per ear and hopefully fewer ears per stalk.
As to sweet corn here the commercial varieties try to eliminate the smaller lesser ears as they don't go through the machines well and wind up as waste.

Bryce

Up here if your FIRST with sweet corn it can start as hi as 4.50 per dozen . Soon the Amish corn comes in at 2.00. I quit growing corn for the market. More $ in radishes. Don’t laugh!

I'm not laughing best we can get hear is
3.50 more money in green beans and black berrys hear, my wife's grand parents live about 2hrs from us and they get up too 7 dollers a dz. I can't figure it out but I've seen I'm sell its crazy, if I could get that I could make a little on it.
Colt

The race was to have the earliest sweet corn. But the early varieties are not nearly as good as the full season corn. If you grow your own, the variety that I liked best was called Bodacious. My wife’s favorite was called Incredible. It really is worth the work.

20 years ago, I sold mine for $3.00 per dozen. It is much more expensive now to grow the same corn. When I stopped selling it people asked me for a few years to grow it again.

Using 5 varieties, i planted all of my corn at the same time. When it started maturing, I was picking fresh corn daily for almost 5 weeks. It was really fun and everybody loved the corn. I used to take it to work in the back of my truck in the parking deck. People would take corn and put the money in an envelope.

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was in a ripoff store today 4.99 a dz
we sell for 3

I grow Ambrosia, It's a bi-colored variety. I use urea as a side dressing, 46% N. I have a very small gardening and plant corn in the same place year after year so i have to pour the nitrogen to it. Also have to spray for ear worms, I use a BT spray.